The ring was whistling as it scythed through the air, spinning at the end of its cord like a sling.

“Come on…” Her words were thick and slurred. Everything tasted of iron. She reached for the flame in her chest and tried desperately to coax it to life. Anything. Just a bit of flame. Please.

The beat had stopped.

“Ey! It ain’t over! Keep the fucking drumming going!” She roared, blood spewing off her bottom lip. The warriors stared, but Bug-Eater lifted his spear and slammed it down. The rest followed. The drums began again.

Wild-Eye was turning back to her. His whole face just a curled, dead thing, a mask of fury. She’d made him angry before, sure. This was something different.

At least she’d really - really - earned it this time. She could take pride in that.

The stamp of the spears thundered and she heard the beat. It moved through her, made her blood flow again, heating up her numb, cold limbs. The ring spun faster.

Wild-Eye lunged and she moved on the wind to step around her own speartip, whistling out towards her chest. His knife slashed wide for her belly, and she twisted, leaning back, letting it graze across without much harm.

She leaned forward and the blazing stone whipped through the air to smash the side of his skull, caving in the side of his good eye with a wet, satisfying crunch.

The world fell silent again, so she grabbed the spear, lifted it. “Shiny-”

It was probably Bug-Eater talking but she didn’t stop. “Fuck you all.” The spear whipped out and caught the back of Wild-Eye's leg, low. There was a sinew there that would snap like a bowstring if you nicked it right.

He screamed as his leg more or less ripped in half, and she glared out at the crowd, her teeth showing along the gash he’d cut in her cheek. “Fuck you fucking sideways!” Her lungs felt raw, and she aimed her spear at Bent-Helm.

He dropped her satchel, and she lifted it with the tip of her spear, tilting the haft so it fell onto her arm. Wild-Eye was making sounds. Everyone else was silent, so the whimpers and cries lifted over their shoulders and echoed in the heights of the cave.

She swung the spear about - aiming it through the crowd and enjoying the way they fell back. The way she'd stopped being the kind of crazy who was fun to hit. Fun to laugh at.

"Hah!" She spat and they jumped, and that was the last thing she wanted. She stepped forward and the tribe split apart to let her past.

She refused to look back as she walked towards the thinning light at the cavern's mouth.

Towards the distant howl of the Elsestorm.

The wind coiled around her like an old friend as she left, hearing the silence behind her, following in her wake. Getting less and less sure of herself - more and more shakey - with every step.

The big wet dog was waiting for her, its eyes staring up like it knew just what had happened. “Ey, if you can talk, don’t right now. I ain’t talky today.” She snapped as she climbed onto its back.

In the distance the storm was bearing down, full of glimpses of everywhere, anywhere, else.

She was dripping with blood that was half-dry already, forming crusts of scab that pulled at her skin when she tried to move. Her muscles ached, her soul ached, and she pitched forward, lying against the dog’s back. Breathing slow and pained.

In the back of her head a thought was growing, in the dark and damp and miserable bits, like a fungus. She could’ve just done what Wild-Eye said. Given up, and gone with the joke, let them laugh. Settled down and made a few kids. Lived all regular-like.

And it wasn’t that she wanted to. Actually, the thought of it made bits of her insides try to die of pure disgust. It made her stomach roil with acid.

She didn’t want to settle for their shitty little lives, for what her parents had. Parents who had gotten sicker and weaker, gone from warriors to sled-pushers to the lowest of the low, knockers, the unlucky and sad and old goblins who went into the deep caves first tapping the stone with long sticks.

Knockers were goblins who got pushed to the front when there was an expedition to harvest mushrooms or find water, and had to stumble in the dark, waiting. Goblins’ whose only use was being eaten first.

Something had eaten her mom, nobody saw what. Her father- they’d just left him there, when he refused to leave, sitting down alone in the dark and waiting. Cast off like old bones with no meat left to chew.

She didn’t want that sad, miserable life of getting scraped down to nothing.

But in a sick way it hurt that she couldn’t choose, anymore. The wind pulled at her hair, the Elsestorm flashed red in the sky above. The thunder swept across the desert moments later.

She straightened up and gazed out at the horizon. She could see the green of the oasis.

Something new, it had said.

Shine-Catch needed something new.

All the old things were dumb and bad.