Kill them!

Teysa’s voice murmured in her ears. It’s ok to trust, Li, she said. It’s ok to need people.

She wanted to listen to that voice, she really did. But a deeper and older voice rose up beneath it, a voice born of fear and hurt. It spoke to her in the hushed, tremulous whisper of a child who had seen far too much suffering and knew that the world was full of more, if she ever let her guard down.

Danger! the little girl said. Threats all around! Only one way to be safe! Only one way to be sure!

Aliara hesitated. She was tired, and scared, and her nerves had been stretched to their limit. Her head spun. She could not tell what was real anymore, what was happening and what was just a memory that had come unmoored. In that state, the oldest instincts rose to the surface, wet and red.

She surged forward, counting on speed and surprise as her only assets. She rounded the corner of the cave, catching a brief glimpse of the trespassers as she barreled down on them. There were three: two humans and an elf, all male, all staring at her with wide eyes and open mouths. One man was huge, a veritable ogre, while the other was slim and dandyish with slicked-back hair and a spear in his hands. The elf had the long grey hair and silver-threaded robes of a Grey City mage. Sure enough, he carried one of their magic staves, a rod of silvered iron set with a glowing pearl.

A mage was a threat. Aliara reacted on instinct, whipping her arm around with steel between her fingers. She wasn’t even watching by the time the knife left her hand, so she did not see it whizz through the air and bury itself in the mage’s neck. He went down, **** and gasping, but she was already onto her next target.

The big man held a torch in one hand. Aliara had avoided looking at it on the way in. Torches had a way of blinding you, and she needed to be sharp. He swung it at her like a club and she dove to avoid it, turning her advance into a roll. The heat from the flames crisped the hair on the back of her neck, but then she was past the torch and rising with a new dagger in each hand. She pounced on the slimmer human, scissoring her blades together like shears to lop off his head.

Somehow he got his spear up in time. He looked like a dandy, but he was surprisingly quick. He was speaking now, babbling orders to his big friend, but Aliara ignored him. She had perhaps two seconds before they could vice her and trap her. Two seconds to take at least one of them out. The big man came in again, swinging the torch at her, and she spun with her blade held outward. There was a wet slicing sound and a spray of blood, and two sausage-thick fingers spun off into the darkness. The big man cursed and let the torch drop. He groped at his belt for his sword, but with his maimed hand he would never draw it in time.

Something sharp struck Aliara between the shoulder blades. She stiffened and gasped as ice spread through her veins. Her lunge at the big man’s throat turned into a stagger and she collapsed forward, her arms spasming and clenching. Poison, she had time to think, but her vision was already tunneling. The last thing she saw before the darkness claimed her was a fourth person stepping into view: a female gnome with a violet topknot and a long-bladed rapier in one hand. She looked down at Aliara and frowned, and her boot swung in against the half-elf’s cheek. Then unconsciousness rose up and carried Aliara away.