Julia cringed internally at her own abrasiveness. Swordwork wasn’t the only thing she had learned from Ravina, apparently. That said, channeling a little of Ravina somehow allowed her to overcome some of her social issues. Ravina had such a brash, unapologetic, and honest demeanor that Julia found both admirable and unseemly at the same time.

  The three elves exchanged glances before the large woman stepped forward. Julia removed her helmet to appear more personable. The woman opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by the slender bowman behind her, glaring suspiciously at Julia. “A naqir? Here? Right as the nashiin activity escalates? This is quite a coincidence. What brings you here, one-who-creates-ripples?” he asked with detectable venom.

  “Peace, Nadhem. This Naqir aided us and slew the Nashiin, or did your Ranger senses fail to notice the vanquished Fellblades?” she questioned as she nodded toward the mostly-thawed block of frozen revenant corpses.

  “This lends credence to suspicion, not trust, Sahira. Do you think us capable of handling seven Fellblades so casually? Yet, she did it single handedly. A contrivance to enter our good graces, no doubt,” he nodded as he reasoned, clearly enamored with his own reasoning, as though he’d just thought of it and was proud, Julia thought.

  “Why would she need to do that, my ghathil, when the Fellblades would have overrun us had she done nothing? We were already at a stalemate, and any further push would have broken us. Why trace a crooked root, when the Fellblades’ branch already grows towards our ruin?” the woman, Sahira, reasoned. Julia liked her already.

  The support mage spoke up, “You are both mistaken. This is no naqir—she is kin. Can you not feel the connection to her? Tell me, please. You are of the Ruwāh?n but bear the visage of a naqir; why?” the mage asked, directing the question to Julia.

  “Uh…I’m sorry, I don’t really understand much of what you just asked,” Julia replied with uncertainty. The archer snorted derisively and then grunted as Sahira elbowed his side.

  “Ah, my apologies. A Ruwāh is a…elemental? No, a spirit, in your tongue. A naqir is a human,” the mage clarified. “I am curious why a spirit would appear as a human, but you are also…” he furrowed his brows in concentration, “...not a spirit? Your substance is…complicated.”

  “I’m a demi-spirit. I guess, halfway between a human and a spirit, you could say?” Julia said. At this point, Trixy came zipping through the air to resume her place as Julia’s harness. The elves all gasped when they caught sight of her, and even the grumpy Nadhem’s eyebrows rose when he saw her wrap around Julia.

  “Sorry if that surprised you. This is Trixy, my companion. We are pact bonded, so you’ll suffer no harm from her,” Julia quickly clarified.

  “A demi-spirit with a bonded spirit companion: fascinating,” the mage mused. “Ah, my apologies. I am Taln?r. These are my ghathil, branches of the same tree, Sahira and Nadhem. We are of the Thornal?n-Veshari—oh, that is our surname. I understand that humans do not always have them?”

  Julia had a sudden flashback to when she left the Guild in Striton after her registration—all those years ago.

  “Why did the guy at the counter call Ravina ‘Bladesworn?’” she asked while they made their way through the city toward home. Braden looked over at her in confusion before understanding dawned on his face.

  “Ah, well. You remember how Dave, and most of the townspeople back in Rockyknoll, had a last name? Sherwood was his—not a coincidence that a line of woodcutters bears that name, I suspect. People use last names, or surnames, to differentiate themselves from others with the same first name, which is called a given name.

  ”Even in Rockyknoll, there is a decent chance for there to be two Daveths. That could get confusing if, for example, you’re a courier that was only instructed to deliver something to ‘Daveth of Rockyknoll.’ Whom do you deliver to if there are multiple in that one town?

  “This differentiation is the main reason for surnames, though there are others. I’ve seen people use them to try and broadcast an elevated status or position, for example. There are cities around the world where only people of a certain social status are allowed to have surnames.

  This helps reinforce their positions of power and authority—it subtly gives people without surnames a feeling of ‘otherness.’ It’s hard to overthrow something you can’t understand completely, after all, and what is more difficult to understand than people who are so different from you that they even use different naming conventions?

  “Regardless, Ravina’s case is a little different. To my knowledge, she doesn’t have a surname. ‘Bladesworn’ became her nickname within the Guild when she started gaining prominence as an up-and-comer. She didn’t ask for the name, but it’s stuck to her so thoroughly at this point that it’s functionally become her surname,” he finished while chuckling.

  Julia pondered for a moment before she looked back up at him. “Do I have a surname?” she asked.

  Braden scratched at his chin while considering. “Do you know if your parents did?” he asked. When Julia shook her head, he put his hand on her shoulder. “How about I give you one? How does N?ralin sound?”

  Julia chewed the name over for a while. She liked the way her mouth felt when she said it. “I like it. Is that your surname?”

  “Something like that,” he chuckled.

  Julia returned to the present, realizing she’d created an awkward lapse in the conversation considering they were waiting on her to introduce herself. “Nice to meet you. I’m Julia. Julia N?ralin,” she said with confidence. She hadn’t had the chance to use that name much.

  Taln?r looked surprised for a second before he smiled. “I see. Then well met, child-of-N?r.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Julia was about to ask what he meant, but Sahira cut in. “This introduction has been pleasant, but we should waste no more time. We must away, lest nashiin reinforcements arrive. No doubt they move to harry us even now,” she said, motioning them forward.

  The elves began pulling out strange contraptions that, at first, looked like bronze. But they handled them too lightly—effortlessly—for that. Some other metal, then. Something much lighter. Not that the metal was the surprising part.

  Each one unfolded on a hinge, snapping into a long, narrow frame. The elves strapped them to their feet like shoes—if shoes were shaped like the hulls of tiny boats. They were slim, just a little wider than a leg, and nearly as long.

  Then the elves stepped onto the water.

  They glided across its surface—smooth and silent, faster than she thought possible. She caught the shimmer of glyphs etched into the bottoms as they moved.

  They were already vanishing into the mist by the time she threw herself forward. She had to reduce her weight and leap with each step, sprinting hard just to keep up. She wanted a pair of those strange foot-boats.

  They traveled this way for around an hour before finally stopping amidst a cluster of three trees intertwined like snakes. They appeared to have grown together, joining trunks and twisting around each other about a stretch off the top of the water.

  Sahira motioned to Taln?r, and he began raising brambles to encircle the base of all three trees, closing off any gaps and nearly sealing them inside.

  Julia aided this endeavor by pushing all the swamp water out of the bramble ring and holding it there before gathering up the sucking, wet mud from inside the circle and pushing it out. She layered it over the brambles like a blanket before siphoning the water out of it, hardening it in place.

  This created a small shield to keep the water out, dried the dirt inside the circle, and also camouflaged them from external prying eyes.

  “That’s nice work,” Taln?r said, nodding in her direction. “Now we’ll have somewhere nice and dry to die.”

  Julia whirled around, crouched into a defensive stance and ready for action—but she saw nothing. The three elves stared at her like she’d grown a third arm. “Die? Is there a threat I can’t see?” she wondered aloud.

  “Oh, no. Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. We’ve all been hit by the clawed-ones in some way or another. Their claws have a vile rot that our magic can’t counter. Alas, maybe the elders at home could, but I don’t possess such skill,” he said sadly, resignedly.

  “We shall not perish before we bring word back to Veshari. The nashiin are organized for some grand purpose, and I would see the branches of all the trees in Veshari warned,” Sahira explained with authority. The way she said it suggested that was what she would be doing regardless of what anyone else did or thought.

  Julia left her crouched, combat-ready stance in favor of leaning her weight on one of her hips while she petted Trixy’s head, pondering the conversation.

  “To warn Veshari requires breaking through the nashiin formation and surviving long enough to deliver our report. How do you propose we do that?” Nadhem said with anger, though it was obviously directed at the situation rather than any one person.

  “With my mace. With my fists. With my teeth, if I must. I will bring word back, even if I have to drag my broken body through the water with only my fingers. I will not let the fell army take more from us,” Sahira said through gritted teeth. Julia was beginning to suspect this conflict with the undead had been going longer than she’d initially suspected.

  “Do you have estimates on their numbers or capabilities?” Julia asked. She continued when all three stared at her without responding. “I encountered a huge behemoth of an undead just hours ago. It was garbed in black plate armor and seemed to command the other undead. They were more organized than I’ve seen anywhere else.

  “Those revenants that were charging you in a near-mindless rage were instead standing at attention around the black knight like guards. The skeletons marched in formation, pikes in front and archers in the back. The gh?ls hid beneath the surface of the water—cloaked by the advancing line of skeletons—and ambushed me when they got close enough.

  “Even worse, that black knight was strong. He spoke a word that the other undead obeyed instantly, and then he joined the fray himself. He used some kind of magic I’ve never seen, and he possessed a flail that had some kind of homing enchantment on it. It followed me when I dodged its strike, and its chain length didn’t seem to correlate to how far it could travel.

  “If you can breach their blockade where the commander is absent, you might have a chance. If that black knight is present, I fear it might not be possible,” she concluded. It was a fairly rough summary of her encounter with the black knight, and she left out the parts where he beat the shit out of her—she felt they probably got the idea.

  Silence stretched for a while before Taln?r eventually spoke. “That you encountered one of their fell captains and survived is proof of your prowess. It is as you say. They are fearsome both for their combat abilities and their military tactics. Tell me, it sounds as though you barely survived this skirmish. Did you not encounter their fell magic preventing your wounds from healing?”

  “I did. I managed to heal it. I could do the same for all of you, but I have to warn you: I am no healer,” she said while pointing to the scar on her eye. “It will hurt, and your wounds will look like this when I’m finished, but the foreign mana will be gone.

  “Actually, if you can heal better than I, Taln?r, perhaps you can do a better job at preventing scars. I can just remove the mana preventing your healing from working,” she concluded.

  He nodded. “That would be fine with me. I do not know whether my healing will work better, but at least this way these two can only blame me for the scars,” he said with good humor.

  “You are willing to let the naqir cast magic on us, Taln?r? You are quick to trust and will be quick to fall,” Nadhem spat.

  “Silence, ghathil. You speak of a Ruwāh in naqir-form—with a Ruwāh companion—that aided us in our time of peril and offers to rid us of the nashiin’s fell curse, and yet you have naught but bile? Let the slow death take you, if you wish, but be silent about it. I will accept the healing to aid my mission and bring word back to the Jadhariin, to our people,” Sahira said firmly and with voice raised.

  Julia gulped subconsciously and nodded. Nadhem sat on his haunches, fuming—likely from being chastised so thoroughly rather than accepting that he was being an asshole, in Julia’s opinion. She approached Sahira as Taln?r moved in from the side, ready to step in with healing once Julia had removed the corruption.

  “Alright, prepare yourself. It’s going to hurt worse the more severe the wound and the longer it’s festered,” she said, removing her gloves. She’d conveniently neglected to mention that it was her first time using healing magic on anyone else.