“Ooph” In a sudden burst of motion, he rises and drives his shoulder into my midsection, sending me rocking backwards and wheezing. The shot straight into my solar plexus stuns me. I reel, struggling to breathe through the pain for a few moments. At the edge of my vision, he scrambles to his feet and settles into a dead run away from me.

  I reach out my hand ineffectually while wheezing, trying to make him stop by will alone. Once I regain the ability to breath, I feel a spark of rage.

  I let my guard down. If it had killed me there, I’d have deserved it.

  “Stop! If you— Drek!” I cut myself off with a curse and draw my remaining four knives between my fingers and thumb and focus on its retreating figure, trying to keep it in my minds eye as clearly as I can. The Sanctus that had been fleeing me in my moment of weakness returns in force, dispelling the lingering pain in my lungs and abs from the sucker punch and wreathing my legs and weapons.

  Satisfied with my mental image, I close my eyes and mutter a prayer once more, “Watcher, imbue your killing might unto this tool. I request your guiding hand. This can’t be allowed to escape. I will see this done.”

  When I open my eyes again, the Calamity has made it farther, but it’s no matter. I feel the Watchers’ presence with me. They will guide these tools as well as they will me. In that I trust.

  I take a couple strides before wheeling my arm once and tossing the glistering knives as high as I can. They arc high with a reassuring shine into the lightening early morning sky, being backlit by the pinks, purples, and golds of oncoming day and come to a sudden halt at their apex.

  The monster looks back at me and the knives, seeing them orient to face it. While I set into motion to give a proper chase, the first of the knives bursts forward with a crack like a rifle at a spoken word in my mother tongue with force. “Xun!” The Sanctus essence always seems to respond better to commands given in the language of my home, but I’ve never felt comfortable enough using it for anything complex. Counting, though? I can count.

  As I set foot on the flagstones leading back towards the gate, I see the first reach the monster masquerading as a man. It doesn’t bury itself in it like last time. It demonstrated that it’s more than capable of reacting fast enough to grab them when they’re close, so instead the knife focuses on harrying the monster. Making close passes at its body, mostly the legs, to make individual cuts and nicks before speeding past to make another pass. All through its flight it constantly gains and loses essence, leaving a glimmering trail of golden sparks in its wake as it hunts.

  Every few strides, I set another knife in motion. Each syllable is punctuated with another crack as the paired knife blasts into motion “Kra, Jin, Vax, Tor.” It still might be able to snag one of them, but with all of them constantly darting and cutting, it’ll be much harder for it to try to focus on any one of them. I just need to pace it until it wears down. These creatures often have tremendous regenerative capabilities, but this one in particular seems only partially transformed, so I’m hedging my bets that I can bleed it and tire it out while buying myself time to recuperate to use normal essences again. Lan always said that pursuit hunting is one of the best ways to hunt some monsters, so maybe it applies to things pretending to be kyn.

  The essence suffusing me quells all of my pain and strengthens my mind and resolve. Between the Fervora imbuement and this, I will see this through to the end. All of the tools are in my hands. I’ll see this thing eradicated for what it did to that town.

  As the knives close in, it abruptly kicks off of a tree by the roadside, redirecting its motion in a sharp jerk that throws off the knives, but not me. I just angle to the side and settle in for the long haul. Running has always been my favorite pass-time and I’ve long since built up substantial secondary essence benefits from doing it so much. This thing won’t outlast me.

  What ensues is a long game of cat and mouse that lasts for what feels like hours. Before too long, the creature has sustained what should have been lethal damage to any remotely sane living thing. Its clothes are shredded to effectively nothing but its boots, belt, and bow have managed to avoid the worst of it in favor of my knives aiming for tendons and arteries, but the damnable thing just keeps regenerating. It’s absurd. Someone it absorbed must have been a life essence practitioner and a seriously good one at that. There’s no other rational explanation for this durability from something that’s still seemingly mostly “mortal”.

  But it bursts through a layer of dense bushes and I hear a shout of surprise followed by a series of heavy thuds. Must have fallen. Finally. I slow and wipe my hand against my nose and mouth, having been feeling moisture building for the last couple of minutes. When I do, it comes away with rich, red blood from both.

  No time to do anything about it. This thing can't escape, no matter the cost.

  I launch myself through the brush after my quarry, ready to fight, and see what happened. It’s just getting up from the ground after dropping to stop its motion. Behind it is a sheer ravine that it keeps glancing backwards at as it back up. When I slow to a stop, I push through the pain in my lungs and have to take a few deep breaths to steady myself.

  “How can you run this long? You should have been tapped out miles ago.” My knives array themselves around me like loyal hunting dogs in a semicircle above my head. “But…that doesn’t matter. End of the road.” I begin to utter a few more syllables as it raises its hands in some facsimile of placation.

  “Please, I’m begging you. I don’t know what’s going on.” Its face looks terrified and confused. But I’m not falling for that again. I’m sure the people in the town were just as confused and scared. “If I was whatever you think I am, would I be running from you? Would I be begging you for my life?” I look closer, seeing the motes of the purple essence of Calamity behind its strained eyes. “You treat me like I’m a mindless monster! I don’t even know who I am, let alone what!” The words start to crack at my focus. Uncertainty. Doubt. My old and comfortable friends creep in. I feel some of my power leave me as they do, and one of the knives falls to the ground.

  What if it’s not an act? The rest of its — his — behavior could easily be explained by being scared. He never attacked me directly, despite a few opportunities to do so while I was stunned. He could have grabbed me after knocking me away or as I approached.

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  But I shake my head. Only one question matters. What if I’m wrong?

  Is it worth the risk for one life after so many others have been lost and however many might come after?

  No, it's not.

  If he or it, or whatever, walks away from here only harm can come from it. One life isn’t worth an uncountable number of others. After what these things took from my kyn, there can be no quarter.

  It holds up its hands in a placating gesture, “This doesn’t have to end this wa—” I silence its words by sending the first knife into its center mass with the first word of my count. It doesn’t try to stop it. Instead, he reaches up and feels at it sticking out from his ribs after it arrives, looking at me with betrayed eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I really am. But this is the way things have to be.” I quickly utter the three remaining numbers in my count, and the knives launch forward. But not before he throws himself backwards off the cliff. The knives follow, streaking over the edge to chase him. I rush to the ledge just in time to see him and the knives strike water some few hundred feet below. I let loose a string of curses in every language I know as I watch, unblinking.

  Beneath the colossal splash, I can’t pick out any details for a few moments, but when the churn ends I see the body float to the surface, face down, in a spreading cloud of rich, red blood that rapidly dilutes in the fast-moving water.

  I watch, focused, as long as I can. He doesn’t move at all. No apparent breathing though it’s nearly impossible to tell from this extreme distance. If I had my real armor I’d be able to tell at a glance. Remembering that fact and how the last night and day could have gone if I’d been properly equipped enrages me, but I keep my eyes pinned on him until he’s entirely out of sight. It takes a few minutes, but he never appears to move once, so I let out a sigh of decompression and collapse back into the grass on the ledge.

  The Ignia-laced adrenaline starts to dump out of my system steadily filling the air around me with red motes of essence. My natural essence levels are returning to normal, causing me to rapidly cool down, my mind to calm down from the state of induced hyperfocus, and all of the sleep I haven’t had reminding me of its existence, or lack thereof.

  That and pain. So very much pain. It feels like someone shoved my legs in a blender and beat what fell out with hammers. My arm is in agony. I lost the splint at some point during the chase and have otherwise been abusing the break all night. I’ll be stunned if it heals right once I finally make it to somewhere I can get it looked at. As to internally, my breath is ragged with spatters of blood still coming up periodically when I cough and a slow trickle leaking from my nose. I’m in pretty dire straits, I recognize a bit clinically.

  I reach across my chest to my belt, finding the two remaining phials there: One Fervora dose and one healing phial. I slip the healing one free and hold it up in front of me while visualizing what I imagine are the most damaged parts of my body and where each component will need to go. The potion can largely think for itself — referring to my body essence reflection, my shade, to figure out where damage is and what needs to be fixed first. But extra mental commands are easy to issue.

  As such, I focus on everything but my arm. It's miserable but not lethal, and it's significant damage, so I don't want the potion focusing its efforts there.

  The contents swirl as I watch, responding to my thoughts. Victus, Sanguis, Cognitio, Mortalos and a small amount of each of the base six essences. All the component parts mix within a crystallized Hydrus shell like the other phials. It swirls like a technicolor dream since nothing inside is in the appropriate ratios to mix with one another into any new compound essences. Like several types of unique oil floating suspended in water.

  There are a few ways I can apply it, but with my internal damage, I go with the most expedient for that problem, even if it’s not the most effective long term. I pop the thumb-sized phial into my mouth and crunch down on it at the same time I toss my head back. The crystal breaks and discorporates into fluid Hydrus, and I promptly swallow the essence mixture before much of it can absorb into my body through my mouth.

  I feel the various essences as they slide down my throat. All essence has a unique taste according to its type, and unsurprisingly, the essences of blood, thought, and souls, respectively, are not pleasant. Life essence tastes a bit like juniper though, and being the bulk of the tincture it mostly covers the others. Mostly in the way that it tastes like juniper and slightly of blood, but it’s better than just blood. As it works its way to my core, I feel the potion doing its work. A cool rush passes through my body and my next cough doesn’t summon up a gobbet of blood, much to my relief. Internal bleeding is a silent killer.

  With that handled, it frees me up to do the next thing I’ve been dreading: thinking. So many questions are spinning around in my head. The same ones as always, but with new ones that weigh so much more heavily than the others.

  Am I good enough for this? I could barely handle what was probably the least powerful Calamity I can imagine.

  Maybe what everyone at the keep says is right?

  Garrick says these things are challenges for him, and he’s got decades of experience over me and no signs of slowing down. If I just abdicate my role, they could train someone better suited in my place.

  Did I do the right thing?

  As I sit there with my knees pulled up to my chest, wrapping my good arm around them and burying my head in them, I realize I started crying at some point.

  "It’s not an unusual reaction to trauma," I tell myself. The last day and a half has been trying above and beyond anything I’ve dealt with aside from maybe one other situation. It’s entirely reasonable.

  All the rationalizations feel hollow though. They do little to salve the real wound.

  I killed someone who was begging for their life. Were they a monster? I don’t know. I was terrified. Is that a good reason? I don’t know. It was for the greater good. But what if he was someone who was resistant to the Calamity in a way that could have helped people? I don’t know.

  “I did the right thing, right?” I ask the chasm, hearing my voice come back to me with a slight delay, sounding deeper and more strung out when it does.

  With no actual answer forthcoming, and the sun raising above the forest around me to dispel the evening chill in earnest, I carefully get to my feet. Pain shoots up my arm so sharply that I fall over forward and only barely catch myself with my good arm to get myself righted again. I'm going to need to be more careful, but first I need to decide what to do.

  I have two options. Return to the town to look for survivors and help them or return to the keep and pass along information about this calamity so the Vigil can organize what must be done.

  I decide that the keep is the only reasonable option. It's the safest of the two, and in my current state I won't be able to do much if anything for anyone else. If I stay around areas with so much death, the odds of running into a monster I won't be able to fight will drastically rise. Which would leave this information undelivered and those people dead all the same. Leaving an unknown number of people to unknown fates leaves me queasy, but I'm only one person, and if that calamity isn't dead, the Order needs to prepare.

  I need to get back to the keep, it's that simple. I haven’t the foggiest clue where I am right now but if I follow the mountain range in the distance and head directly at it, I’ll cross a road eventually, and from there I can get my bearings and get back to the keep. I have to report this as soon as possible. The Blackthorns must know about this strange exception to the norms.

  I set off, walking the opposite direction that the man floated and towards the multicolored metallic mountains vaulting towards the sky in the distance.