The biggest advantage of a knife is concealment and surprise. Take those two elements away, and the prospect of fighting with one becomes far more precarious. My father told me something once, on one of those days, where he came home pale and stricken, and wanted nothing more than to sit in his chair and stare at the TV.

”In a knife fight, the loser dies in the street. The winner dies in the ambulance.”

Mantle reeled backwards, hand covering his bloodied eye, letting out a scream of pain. I hauled myself up and grabbed him by the throat, drawing my crossbow with my freehand and pressing it to his stomach.

I flew backwards, momentarily airborne as the SUV took a hard left turn and collided with the panel of the side-door. Fire shot up my spine. The pain plateaued as Mantle followed me. His forearm landed full-force on my rib-cage—it was purely reflexive, an attempt to stop himself from falling, but judging from the sickening crunch in my chest that followed, his intent didn’t matter.

“Jesus!” Someone yelled from the front seat. I caught a glimpse of the two men up front. The driver was swiveling in his seat, trying to get a glimpse of the scuffle and keep one eye on the road, respectively. The other—a medium build man wearing a crimson jeweled ringlet that was a borderline tiara—had gone up on his knees and was pointing a thorned wand in our direction, squinting with focus, trying to get an angle.

“Stop the van!” Ringlet shouted.

“The brakes aren’t fucking working!”

Still pinned under Mantle, I drew my leg up and kicked outwards, trying to knock the wand free. I pinned Ringlet’s arm against the driver’s side seat with my heel and ground my foot, feeling the bones in his hand flex.

Ringlet yelped and slammed a fist into my leg. He was aiming for my knee but missed, fist impacting my upper thigh. When he drew back to strike again, I managed to kick him in the face, sending him colliding into the driver.

There was an impact, followed by a sudden heat emitted from my side with the intensity of the sun. A slick feeling of wetness followed.

I fought back against the shock that came with a realization. I’d been stabbed.

Mantle had stabbed me.

All that talk about not wanting to kill a kid sure went out the window fast.

His expression was a mix of pain and outrage as he tore the weapon free and stabbed down again, inches from where the first blow had landed. My mind and survival instinct went into overdrive. I trapped the knife with my arm and struck out with an open palm, driving the meat of my hand into his nose. Cartilage snapped, and blood spewed out of Mantle’s nose.

My options were perilously scarce. I’d thrown and hadn’t had a chance to summon it back before losing consciousness. Both Audrey and Talia were out of play. Nick’s Saber wouldn’t help me in such tight quarters.

I reached for and came up empty. Suddenly, the familiarity of the hilt jutting out of my side was all too significant.

Bastard stabbed me with my own knife.

A wave of rage followed.

In the chaos, I was barely cognizant enough to make out what Beanie was saying as he yelled out the crossroads “… heading north, currently under attack by a rogue User Calling all guild members, we are code bri—“

I got both knees under Mantle’s chest and him off of me, ignoring the pain as the knife came free. Then I reached up and yanked at the top of the driver’s side seat belt. It locked on the first attempt. When it slackened on the second, I looped the dark fabric around beanie’s neck twice and yanked it taut. Beanie’s eyes bugged out of his head. He struggled with the seatbelt but managed to keep one hand on the steering wheel. I ravaged his mind with

”If you don’t keep driving, your friends are dead.”

An ear-splitting shriek rang out, followed by a bright red light and a bang. The tempered glass window on my left shattered. Ringlet had recovered his wand and had apparently decided to be far less selective with his shots. I got a knee on Mantle’s knife wrist and threw myself at Ringlet’s shoulder first, hitting hard muscle. He wasn’t squishy like most spell casters I’d encountered. Either he was already built before the system came into being, or he was going for some sort of hybrid build. Regardless of why, he barely moved, absorbing the impact with a quiet grunt and managed to keep his wand pointed at my head, tip growing red, scorching my skin.

I waited for the last moment and ducked. My face was pressed against the console between the seats, so I didn’t see it land, only the aftermath.

“Oh shit.” Ringlet said, voice tinged with horror.

“Asshole.” Beanie had stopped trying to loosen the seat belt around his neck, instead preoccupied with applying pressure to the gaping wound in his side.

I pulled back and punched Ringlet in the jaw. guided me as I alternated slamming my fist and elbow into his face and throat over and over. Something broke, and Ringlet’s eyes lost focus. Instead of hitting him again, I reached over his body and grabbed the handle of the passenger side door, using all my strength to push it open against the wind and shove him towards the void.

Ringlet all but allowed himself to be moved until he was hanging halfway out of the passenger side and beginning to tip over, then came back to his senses in a windmilling panic, grabbing the doorframe and trying to pull himself back in.

If I had a little more time, I probably could have gotten him out. But I could feel Mantle working his wrist free. With a frustrated roar, I grabbed the door handle and, assisted by the force of the fifty-mile-an-hour wind, yanked it back. The plastic composite door cracked as it collided with Ringlet’s head. Ringlet went limp, one arm still hanging out of the car, the other raising in the air as if to ward off an invisible blow.

The force of the door closing pushed me back. I tried to pivot to face Mantle as I plummeted, landing directly on his waiting knife. It struck center mass, where my armor offered the most protection. That same hot feeling from the first blow radiated from my chest, and I realized it must have gotten through. No more than an inch or two, or I would have been dead.

Beanie screamed. Blood ran freely from his side as he leaned over in his seat, arm looped around Ringlet’s ankle. From a brief look at the struggle, it didn’t seem like Ringlet was just slipping out of the car. Something was pulling him. A feral growling was barely audible over the sound of the engine.

Talia.

Moments later, Ringlet was yanked out of the car completely, leaving Beanie holding an empty boot and screaming.

was still stuck in my chest plate. Mantle had tried to push it deeper at first, then pull it out. Finally, he snarled and abandoned the knife completely, reaching towards his side and drawing a short sword.

I inventoried my knife and drew it back out, holding it up and ready.

We attacked simultaneously. What followed probably lasted less than a minute, but felt like an eternity. I aimed for his vitals, organs and veins. Mantle gave as good as he got. The short sword was more awkward than a knife in the close-quarters, but there were still a half-dozen impacts. There was almost no pain, which in the back of my mind felt more than a little alarming.

Simultaneously, either the seat belt around his neck or the gaping wound in his side finally got the better of Beanie. He slumped to the side, hands slipping off the steering wheel as his forehead pressed against the passenger side glass. The SUV swerved, popping up on a curb at high speed and continuing onto the sidewalk, veering towards a building.

I had a split-second to react, grabbing the passenger seat and bracing before impact.

/////

A deeply unpleasant feeling roused me. Something long and wet slid up my cheek, into my hair. A monotonous chime dinged over and over. Another wet stroke started at my chin and up towards my forehead.

I sputtered, opening my eyes and pushing whatever it was away and touching something soft. Talia stared down at me, her canine face somber.

“Well…“ I hacked up something and spit blood. “…If anything’s going to eat me alive…”

“Your wounds are both many and grave. The death scent is upon you, human. I administered a potion, but it is still there, lingering.” Talia rumbled.

“How the hell did you manage that?” Just getting the cork out and the bottle in my mouth must have been a pain without opposable thumbs.

“With much effort. And I may have wasted a few of them.” Talia’s face darkened. “There is unfinished business outside.”

Before I could ask what she meant, the rest of the SUV came into focus. There was barely an inch of upholstery that wasn’t splattered with blood. Beanie never got the seatbelt off. It was still wrapped around his neck, his face ashen and gray. The overhead lights were on, and the rear passenger door across from us was open. Mantle was nowhere to be seen.

My mask had fallen to the floor on the passenger side, along with most of my equipment. I gathered it all wordlessly and replaced the mask on my face.

I stumbled out of the SUV, bracing myself against it as my knees nearly buckled beneath me. Half the engine block was embedded in a brick building, the frame of the car accordion crumpled and twisted beyond any potential of usability. I quaffed another potion, some warmth and feeling returning to me as it trickled down my throat. There was a dark red stain smeared on the ground, trailing to a battered heap.

Mantle was escaping at the speed of a snail, slowly dragging himself down the abandoned road. A black rage came over me. I took another potion and stalked over to him, grabbing him by the shoulder and flipping him over. He stared up at me in terror, his hands raised.

“Why?” I asked, my voice cold. “We could have split the lux and gone our separate ways. Now look what you fucking did.” He quivered under the verbal barrage and squinted his eyes shut.

“You killed us all.” Mantle whispered.

I released him and took a step back. “You brought this on yourself.”

“All that self-righteous horseshit… when you could have just let us go.”

He was wrong. What had happened was self-defense, by any reasonable metric.

If you ignore the part that came before, where you chased them down and jumped into the car. cackled.

I reached in my inventory and withdrew a potion. Then hesitated. Talia walked in front of me, a dark glitter in her eye. ”This scum saw your face. Stole from you. Theft and double-cross aside, there is a reason they took you with them. They likely intended to kill you.”

“Yes…” I faltered, suddenly feeling very small. “He had a knife to my throat. Before I fought back.”

”Then you owe him nothing.” Talia growled. She pressed her head against my thigh.

I knew it. That she was right. Saving Mantle was my first instinct. He didn’t have long. There was no one else nearby and if I acted, there was a chance I could save him. Harm reduction had always been key to my ethos. It didn’t matter that my actions had led to the deaths of two. If there was something I could do to stop that number from becoming three, that was the appropriate course.

Only, as I watched him crawl away, it dawned on me that it wasn’t as simple as I wanted it to be. Because for the first time, my core philosophies were in conflict. Mantle would never forget my face if he survived. There was a strong possibility he could throw the people I cared about in jeopardy.

Mantle placed his arms beneath him, as if intending to push himself to his feet. Then collapsed.

A purple notification light appeared in the corner of my vision.

I removed my glove and checked for a pulse.

Nothing.

Numbly, I returned to the SUV and retrieved the bag of lux. Talia was still standing in the center of the road, her head cocked. “There are many vehicles headed this way, pup.”

I froze. For the first time, I took in my surroundings. We were standing in the center of a cul-de-sac in a small middle-class neighborhood. Judging from the distant skyline, I was somewhere on the north side of Dallas. Beanie had probably panicked, driving into a residential area and eventually a no-outlet road before colliding into one of the houses on the road.

And managed to get a message to their guild before he died.

The first set of headlights appeared at the end of the road, followed by another. Despair washed over me. I was so close. I could hop a fence, but if there were enough of them it wouldn’t matter. They’d cut me off.

“This might be it,” I said grimly.

“It will be a noble end.” Talia stood in front of me, facing the oncoming vehicles, her head held high. “But it is surprising. That you would give up so easily.”

“I haven’t given up.” I multitasked, beginning the process of resummoning Audrey and pulling up the system message that wouldn’t go away. Text scrolled in front of me.