Caen sat on the stone slab, holding the bucket of frothing water as two men came into throwing range across from him. One of them was holding a catapult, a fat pebble braced in its sling. Yellow Tassel’s nose was crooked at an angle—probably the result of his fight with the Vedul woman last night.

  Squinting in the dark, both men laughed as they swaggered towards Caen. “Well, what do we have h—”

  Caen flicked out the bucket, splashing them with acid immediately. The projectile from the catapult deflected painfully off Caen's raised vambrace just as both men began screaming in pain, rubbing at their faces.

  Using his glaive, he swept one man's feet from under him and slammed the shaft across the head of the other with all his might, though it didn’t knock the man out. He took out his pocket pistol and shot them both in the knee. Being gentle with people who had passive augmentations was a dangerous game. All his life, Caen had never needed to pull his punches, and he wasn't going to start now.

  Holstering his gun, he moved past the howling men he'd just downed and sprinted for the dark forest, glaive in hand. Already, their companions farther out had started running towards the bathhouse, shouting and calling out.

  Caen tried casting a basic Body-enhancement spell. It failed a few times, but on the last try, it took hold, allowing him to move much faster.

  A hurried glance over his shoulder revealed that someone had turned on a lantern.

  A distant whoosh followed a fireball hurtling towards him. He dove out of the way. Two Fire practicians had conjured flames, one of them shouting out directions. They were all coming at him in a wide arc. Leading the group by several yards was a woman catching up to him very quickly with sudden bursts of speed. Body-enhancer.

  Caen ran past an ancestral grove that had been built at the edge of the forest. Just as he made it past the trees, he ducked out of the way of another fireball that hit the tree beside him with concussive force, splashing sparks of flame on his face and helmet. He hissed in pain, but didn't stop moving. Clumsily, he took off his bag of holding and tossed it to the side.

  It was much darker in the forest than he'd assumed. Good. The Body-enhancer was gaining on him. The trees here were not as closely packed as he’d hoped, and the Body-enhancement spell he'd cast ran out. Still, he continued to move erratically to throw her off. The passive augmentations that accompanied some affinities would significantly improve her senses, but increased physical speed didn't come with heightened mental processing.

  Still running, he flung his glaive at her feet. Body-enhancers didn’t often tend to take the most optimal actions. Caen banked on that now as he pulled out two frail vials of ychna powder. His assailant leaped over his glaive easily. He flung both vials at her. One hit her in the face, the other in the chest, but they both exploded into a brown cloud of a severe respiratory irritant. Even with the precautions he’d taken, he hesitated an instant before moving into the cloud with his revolver.

  He could see dim lights through the trees and hear voices as several more of them rushed into the forest.

  The Body-enhancer was coughing violently as she staggered away. Caen shot her once in the back, then behind both her knees. Holstering his revolver, he stomped on one of her knees for good measure.

  “That's him!” another woman screamed.

  Caen ducked out of the way as a pair of fireballs crashed against the tree behind him. He moved to hide as they followed.

  A Fire practician holding up a flame above her palm was accompanied by two men. One with a thick length of chain that ended in a heavy metal hook, and the other with a sledgehammer made entirely out of ice.

  Caen darted out from behind a tree, taking out his dagger. It was coated with a potent and fast-acting paralytic that even Vensha couldn't shake off quickly.

  The Fire practician yelped as the fire in her hand winked out, plunging them into relative darkness.

  “Fuck fuck fuck!”

  Caen kept flickering Soul-sense to disrupt her working as he covered the distance in quick strides. She abandoned her spell and scrambled for a dagger on her belt, trying to track him in the dark. He threw a vial of ychna at her face. Coughing violently, she swung with her weapon blindly. He ducked under her slash and slammed the dagger into her side. She let out a strangled sound as she dropped.

  Caen leaped out of the way of a chain swipe. The man could not see clearly and was flailing his weapon about while babbling curses. Caen flung two vials at him, and the man’s top half erupted in flames.

  Out the corner of his eye, Caen saw the Ice practician running at him with an ice sledgehammer raised and shouting to alert the others. Flickering Soul-sense didn't destabilize the hammer. It was a stable effect. Caen continued flickering to prevent any Ice spells, already reloading his pocket pistol. He’d save the revolver for the two large individuals he’d yet to encounter.

  He moved out of the way of a heavy swipe of the ice sledgehammer, dodged another just as the chymical fire on the chain user died out, leaving the clearing dark once more. Then Caen shot the Ice practician in the knee and shoulder. The man fell, dropping his weapon.

  Heavy stomps alerted Caen before he saw a seven-foot-tall Body-enhancer approaching. At the same time, a Flora practician deftly manipulated thorny vines to wrap around Caen's armored form.

  Letting go of his pocket pistol, Caen flickered Soul-sense to disrupt the spell moving the vines, as he hefted the sledgehammer with a grunt. Even through his enchanted gloves, the ice construct was painfully frigid.

  The Flora practician began stumbling back, a panicked look on his face. The sledgehammer hit his head with a thud.

  Caen quickly grabbed the concussed Flora practician by the collar of his shirt and the band of his pants, then swung the man between himself and the Body-enhancer like a shield just in time to absorb a blow that sent them hurtling several feet back and into the ground. Caen’s breathing sequence faltered under the pain from the blow.

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  “So you're the little ant?” asked the hulking, bare-chested man.

  Caen pushed aside the Flora practician’s limp body and flung two glass vials at the Body-enhancer while flickering Soul-sense to impede the man's enhancement. The first vial took the large man by surprise, splashing a colorless sludge harmlessly over him, but his upraised arm blocked the second, foiling the intended chymical reaction.

  He trudged menacingly towards Caen, trying and failing to wipe off the goo on his lower face and chest. “Eurgh! What is thi—”

  Caen hadn’t stopped flickering Soul-sense. He whipped out his revolver and shot the man thrice. One bullet in his right knee, two in his left. A sudden, uncharacteristic breeze began flowing around Caen as he rose to his feet.

  The Body-enhancer fell to his knees and hands, growling. “You cheap bastard! I'll—”

  Caen flung another vial at the Body-enhancer, the contents of which reacted with the sludge on the man's body. He screamed in pain, clawing at his chest and face.

  “Tawen!” someone shouted from behind Caen.

  “He’s over there!” someone else said.

  Caen retreated deeper into the forest, hurriedly reloading his revolver. He’d already started casting a basic Vibration spell to buy himself a distraction. His heart was thumping in his chest. Four people jogged over, their hair and clothes fluttering wildly about them as if caught in an invisible breeze. One of them was the Fire practician who had tried to burn down Caen's tent last night. He held a ball of flame the size of a fist above his palm.

  “By the gods!” cried a lanky woman in the group as she looked down at the Body-enhancer Caen had shot. “Why is his skin blue?”

  “Chuima, focus,” the Fire practician scolded. “Where is the bastard?”

  “Right,” she said. The breeze picked up, caressing Caen's clothes and loose strands of his hair as he hastened quietly, hoping to come at them from an angle.

  The thin woman pointed at the tree Caen was currently moving past. “There,” she said, surprising Caen with her accuracy.

  He moved in the other direction, just as a terribly identical man beside her gestured at his previous location. Dull thuds slapped along the trunk, and looking at the man’s soul structure revealed an active thread cluster.

  Projectiles of some kind. Kinesis? Wind magic?

  The woman, too, seemed to be using Wind magic to track Caen somehow. Under other circumstances, he might have been intrigued.

  Caen slammed in the last bullet and rolled the cylinder back into place. Flickering Soul-sense caused the Fire practician's fireball to wink out. The wind practician immediately thrust out his right hand, which held a medallion with glowing crystals. At the same time, Caen completed his Vibration spell, projected his voice to come from behind the entire group, and shot twice at the Fire practician. The group of four, temporarily blinded, looked behind them, cursing loudly and flinching at the gunshots, but no one was harmed. The medallion grew brighter.

  It’s a shielding medallion, Caen realized as the wind picked up around him.

  The tracker, scrabbling with an unlit lantern of placid reshent at her belt, tapped desperately on the shoulder of the Wind practician holding the medallion. “He’s down there.”

  “I can’t see!”

  “What the fuck are you doing? We need light.”

  “I’m trying!”

  Caen used all his bullets, shooting at the Wind practician. The medallion brightened each time. Shielding medallions that only allowed one-way attacks were nigh mythical and incredibly expensive, but Caen couldn’t assume: he’d shoot the moment they attacked.

  Reloading his gun, he started retreating into the forest behind him just as the tracker turned on her lamp and screamed out his location.

  The Fire practician conjured and flung a fireball, despite Caen's flickerings. The fireball slammed into a bush and set it aflame just as Caen rolled away from it. Invisible blades sliced painfully into the unprotected parts of Caen's face, neck, and hands, causing him to drop the remaining bullets in his hand and shield his eyes and goggles as deep, thin cuts covered his exposed skin. He flickered Soul-sense at the Wind practician and shot him twice. Shoulder. Stomach. Out of bullets.

  He dove out of the way of a pair of fireballs, ducked under yet another, and got indirectly splashed with hot sparks when a fireball collided into a tree trunk beside him. He suppressed a scream as he rolled behind a tree, breathing hard. His belt bag was shredded on the surface, but thankfully fine: its enchantments still held. He hurriedly retrieved some herbs to numb the pain and slow the blood flowing from his injuries. He ripped away his tattered handkerchief to shove the herbs into his mouth and chewed.

  “Where?” the Fire practician roared.

  “My brother is bleeding!”

  Caen hurriedly reached for more bullets and realized that the pouch holding them had been ripped apart. He was completely out of bullets. Cursing, he began looking around to see if he’d find any on the ground.

  “Chuima, activate the medallion.”

  “I don’t know how! He's—he’s there! That way.”

  Several fireballs hurtled at Caen, forcing him to move deeper into the forest. The Fire practician made sure to extinguish his flames every time. He was more skilled than Caen had assumed.

  “Come out! Come out, you fucking coward!” the Fire practician screamed.

  There were twelve of them against one of him, and he was the coward? He focused on a breathing sequence that kept his annoyance at bay.

  He was tired, there was a Body-enhancer among them, and he didn't have any more bullets. Even if running were an option, it wouldn't permanently solve this problem. Caen had never been ashamed of strategic retreats and running away from troublemakers. But he was here in Odaton for serious business. He didn't have the time to keep looking over his shoulder, awaiting retaliation. Whatever this was, it had to end tonight.

  Flickering Soul-sense had worked on the Wind practician, but it was not disrupting the Fire practician's spells, nor did it seem to be doing anything to halt the woman tracking him.

  As if on cue, the tracker screamed, “There!”

  The Fire practician hurled a trio of fireballs in quick succession, but Caen was already out of the way.

  From behind a tree, he connected to the Fire practician and started Mimicking the man's Fire affinity. When he'd Mimicked that ant at the front zone, even with a partially reverted thread cluster, he'd been able to cast spells better than usual. Perhaps a partially imitated one might also allow him to achieve the same result. Passionfire was a clear and easy solution to all this.

  The Fire practician began conjuring a ball of flame nearly as large as his head, and it kept swelling.

  Just seconds after Caen had begun Mimicking the man's affinity, something strange happened. Caen received an impression from their connection. An impression of foaming… agitation. He was struck by how clear and distinct it was. The Fire practician’s soul structure seemed more alive to Caen than it had a second ago.

  This man wanted to hurt Caen for reasons best known to him. He needed to burn Caen. The man’s flames were not hot enough, but he needed them to be hotter, stronger, larger. Caen could feel all this. And he understood.

  Caen was a lit candle, zealous and eager to share his flame with an unlit one.