The day was bright, not a cloud in sight. A breeze moved through the grassland in slow waves and found the treeline behind it, pulling a low hollow sound from somewhere in the branches that came and went every few minutes.

  Not far away stood five friends, partaking in their favourite pastime. Winding each other up.

  The eerie shriek came again and Liam's head turned toward it.

  "You can stop doing that," Paul said, not looking up.

  "I'm not doing anything."

  "You keep looking."

  "So do you."

  "Well excuse me for keeping an eye out."

  "You jumped the last time."

  "I didn't jump, I saw something. There's a difference."

  "Sure man, keep telling yourself that..."

  Parmo wasn't paying attention. He had his lighter out, flicking it open with his thumb, letting the flame catch for a second, snapping it shut. Open, flame, shut. He'd been doing it since they left the barricade.

  "What time is it?" Ste asked.

  "Dunno," Lee said.

  Parmo glanced over. "Oh yeah. Gave your watch away didn't you."

  "This again?"

  "Yes, this again."

  Ste grinned. "You think she's wearing it?"

  "Even if she's wearing it, it doesn't mean anything. It's a watch. People wear them."

  Paul left a pause. "Yeah, but like..."

  "Dude, we spoke for like 5 minutes. We looked scared out of our minds. How is that going to make any of us look good in her eyes. Never mind me."

  "You're overthinking things man." Parmo flicked the lighter open and shut. "Have you seen how we all look now? We're fucking shredded bro. What's not to like?"

  "You realise she comes from a place where people fight for a living. There's going to be loads of people who look like us. Why would I stand out in all of that?"

  Liam had been quiet through most of it. He looked at Lee. "Seriously man. You're your own worst enemy with stuff like this."

  There was a pause, the joke touching on a nerve.

  Paul's mouth curled. "You think she'll be mad when she finds out about your cat girl body pillow?"

  "Oh, fuck off." Lee laughed.

  The wind moved through the treeline again. Everyone looked up.

  Shai stepped out of the treeline and crossed the grass toward them. Lee noticed the watch on her wrist and hoped no one else had. He glanced to his left slightly, Paul was stood looking at him the same way, a grin forming on his face. Oh, he had definitely noticed.

  "Good to see you're all in one piece," she said as she reached them. Her eyes moved across the group the same way they had the day before, quick and professional. Whatever she was looking for she seemed to find it. "I spoke to the elders last night. They've agreed to—"

  Parmo flicked the lighter open. Flame. Shut.

  Something moved in the trees.

  Rika cleared the treeline half running, half skipping, wings giving her an extra push with each stride. She was shorter than Shai, bright eyed, and she was already talking before she'd covered half the distance.

  "Is that a fire that came from nowhere? How did you do that? What is that little metal thing? Can I see it?"

  Shai closed her eyes. Her swaying tail drooped slightly as she let out a breath.

  "Rika."

  "I tried Shai, I really did."

  "You lasted eleven seconds."

  "Can you blame me? Look at this. What is this?" She looked at Parmo.

  Parmo looked at the lighter in his hand, then at Rika, then back at the lighter. He held it out. Rika took it immediately, turned it over in her hands, flicked it open the wrong way, then the right way. The flame caught and she made a sound that was somewhere between delight and alarm.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Ste was staring. He didn't seem to realise he was doing it.

  Lee was trying very hard to look at Shai in a normal way, which was making it considerably worse. He could feel Paul watching him and refused to look again.

  Then Torren walked out of the trees.

  The grass shifted under his weight and Paul's head snapped around. "Holy shit."

  Liam took half a step forward. His eyes wide, jaw dropping slightly.

  Torren took his time crossing the grass. He wasn't in any hurry. Halfway across he slowed slightly, tilted his head back, and drew in a long slow breath through his nose, eyes half closing.

  "Ah," he said. "Cloud lily. I do love the smell of it in the morning. Really makes the senses tingle."

  He looked at the five of them properly for the first time. Warm, unhurried, entirely unbothered by whatever was on their faces.

  "And my." A broad smile. "What strapping young men. You five must be very popular with the ladies."

  The grassland was quiet for a moment.

  All five of them looked at each other.

  Rika grabbed Parmo the second Shai stopped talking. She was already firing questions at him about the lighter, whatever came to mind, before he'd had a chance to react.

  The other four drifted together. They thought they were being subtle about it. They were not.

  Lee looked up at the approaching giant. "I'm six foot four," he said, before he'd decided to say anything. "I mean, I'm tall. But you're something else, mate."

  Torren laughed. It came from somewhere deep and genuine. "I get that a lot."

  The four of them pulled close. Heads down. Voices dropped.

  "That's what you took from all of that?" Paul whispered. "His height?"

  "I'm sorry, is nobody else seeing this?" Ste said, his voice barely audible. "He tilted his head back like he was in a perfume advert. A fucking perfume advert."

  "He called us strapping," Liam whispered. "I haven't been called strapping since my grandma saw me in a suit for the first time..."

  "Keep it together," Paul said, smoothing his shirt, hands shaking slightly. "The man is enormous, he seems to like us, and I am not ruining that by being weird about it."

  "You're already being weird about it," Lee said.

  "We're all being weird about it."

  "He can hear you," Shai said, without turning around.

  Torren said nothing, his shoulders were already moving. He hadn't quite finished laughing by the time he reached them.

  Shai looked at the group, Rika was still talking at Parmo, the other four trying to look like they hadn't just been whispering. She made a decision.

  "Right," she said, loud enough to cut through everything.

  Everyone stopped. Rika paused mid-sentence. Parmo looked relieved.

  Torren was still shaking.

  "Three days," Shai said. "The elders will come to you, here at the edge of the clearing. Bring whoever needs to be there on your side." She looked at each of them in turn. "There's more. The goblin that came out of that forest didn't wander out on its own. It was injured already. Something forced it out. The Wilds aren't safe and they don't stop being unsafe because nothing has come out in a few days. You need to know what's in there, what to avoid, what actually hunts and what doesn't. The elders will bring that knowledge to the meeting. Until then, we are going to be setting up a camp in the treeline. We'll be out of sight of the town. If something heads this way before the meeting it won't get far."

  "That's very kind of you, especially as we haven't come to an agreement yet," Ste said.

  "The elders decided it this morning. Think of it as a gesture of good will. It costs us little and we'd rather act than wait."

  The boys nodded.

  "One more thing," Shai said. "For those of you who've been pushing your magic hard, what you've been experiencing, the sickness, the feeling something isn't quite right — that's mana exhaustion. It's a common thing when people push their mana well too quickly and risk depleting it without giving it time to refill." She paused. "Pushing builds your capacity over time. That's good. But there's a difference between pushing hard and pushing through actual damage. Keep overdoing it and eventually something will break. Best not to find out."

  Paul nodded slowly. "So that's what that was."

  Liam looked at Paul. "It's like the gym isn't it. Deliberate work, pushing yourself, that leads to steady progress. Overdoing it does the opposite."

  "Yeah you're right." Paul nodded. "Good to know what it actually is."

  Rika had her arms crossed and was tapping her foot. Torren had stopped shaking, though the smile hadn't gone anywhere.

  The second Shai finished speaking Rika was right back at it.

  "Right," she said, her wings fluttering slightly behind her. "My turn."

  "Rika—"

  "I have been standing here, Shai. Standing here, quietly, while you did your very important captain thing, and I have been very good about it." She turned to the boys. "I have so many questions. I don't know where to start. I'm going to start with the fire thing because I can't stop thinking about it." She looked at Parmo. "You said something about fluid and a wheel. Explain."

  Parmo blinked. "Right now?"

  "Yes right now."

  "Okay." He took the lighter back, held it up. "There's fluid inside. Naphtha, it's like a very thin oil. The wheel here," he ran his thumb across it without striking it, "is serrated. When you spin it fast enough against the flint it creates a spark. The spark catches the vapour from the fluid and," he flicked it, the flame caught, "fire."

  Rika stared at the flame. "So it's not magic."

  "No, it's science."

  "Science?"

  Parmo looked at his friends. They looked away. "That may take a while to explain."

  She looked at Torren. Torren looked back at her, gave her a shrug, and went back to quietly watching. His grin hadn't changed.

  "I told you yesterday," Shai said. "They have no magic where they come from, everything was figured out another way."

  Rika hadn't finished with it. "How does that even happen? I mean, there's so much we use magic for, how did you even get anywhere having to do all that without it?"

  "It took a long time," Ste said. "Thousands of years of people working together, figuring things out."

  "Hm." She seemed to be processing this. Then she looked at her wings, then at Parmo. "Do you want to see something fun?"

  Parmo looked at the others then back at her. "Yeah actually."

  Rika took three quick steps back, rolled her shoulders once, and jumped. The wings caught the air and she rose maybe fifteen feet before banking in a wide lazy circle above them, feathers catching the light. She landed back where she'd started, light on her feet, clearly pleased with herself.

  "That," Parmo said, "is genuinely one of the coolest things I've ever seen."

  Rika beamed.

  Liam had been quiet through most of it, watching her come back down. "Can I ask something?" He looked at Torren. "Do you know any dwarves?"

  Torren considered this. "A few, yes. Traders mostly. Why?"

  "Just curious, we have a lot of stories of different races. Dwarves are quite popular in a lot of them."

  Paul looked at him. "You looking for someone closer to your own height?"

  The boys laughed. Liam glared at Paul. It just made the situation worse.

  Shai looked at Torren and he looked back. Neither of them said anything because neither of them understood what had just happened, which somehow made it funnier.