Whenever I was in combat, things that happened quickly tended to feel like they were happening slowly. Humans often experienced something similar as a result of their adrenaline or other reactive endogenous stimulants, but in my case it was because the device which contained my consciousness would temporarily speed up its computation to allow me to think faster. The side effect of this was that it generated much more heat and used much more energy so it could not be maintained indefinitely. So as I approached Dayvao rapidly, through my own eyes the scene played out in slow motion.

Her facial expressions said everything they needed to say before I had even drawn my weapon. The idea of fighting me terrified her, and the harder exterior she had shown to me some days previous was merely a front. As I dashed and bobbed to my right, I watched for the moment I was expecting, and it happened. For an instant, no longer than perhaps fifty milliseconds, she hesitated to move her spear. Had she moved it immediately she might have clipped me on my left and knocked me off balance, but I had seen enough humans with battle trauma to know that there was a very large chance she would freeze up. By the time she had decided to move the spear it was too late, I had already passed the head of it and was rushing up to her at full speed.

I leveraged the full weight of my body behind my strike as I sunk my blade into the soft flesh on the underside of her jawbone at my best approximation of a thirty-degree angle. The hard metal sliced through her skin, muscle, bone, and cartilage alike as though they were nothing but clay. I saw the panic leave her eyes as the knife cleaved upwards through her brain stem, then through her cerebellum and out the back of her skull. I doubted that she had enough time to feel the pain of the strike before her conscious thought stopped. One down, I thought as the rest of my body smashed into hers, knocking her backwards.

On the way down towards the ground I began executing the next part of my plan. I gripped the shaft of the spear with my left hand, pulling it away from Dayvao's limp hands as I curled my body inwards to begin a roll. Keeping my momentum was important for the next part, and as I exited the roll and sprang to my feet my eyes darted back and forth between the matriarch and patriarch, both of whom had already started moving backwards to let the guards have space to fight me. The matriarch is smaller, I thought, though not in so many words. My left arm reared upwards into a throwing position, then flew forwards.

At the same time as the spear left my hand I heard the distinct twang of two bowstrings, one after another, each to either side of me. Knowing I couldn't possibly dodge at short range, I instead twisted my body to try to make sure the arrows hit my breastplate at a favorable angle. My back was hit first, with the arrow glancing off and impacting the ground somewhere to what was now my right. The front arrow then hit my upper left breast and screeched against the metal beneath my clothing, nicking my left shoulder before bouncing off at a high angle. I let my momentum continue spinning me until I had turned one hundred and eighty degrees.

I glanced back to the matriarch and everything started to speed back up again. She was somehow pinned to the ground at around a sixty-degree angle by the spear, which had impacted too low to cause a fatal blow to the heart and too centered to pierce the lungs. I barely had time to register my disappointment before Mpahray and Vowteyz dove towards me, Mpahray aiming for my head with an overhead strike and Vowteyz swinging for my gut horizontally. At the range I was at it was unlikely I could get out of the way of both in time, so I was forced to choose, and I chose to avoid the overhead strike.

Vowteyz's blade cut viciously into my right side before halting due to a combination of my armor and my own hand grabbing the blade of his sword. The impact from the strike knocked my hatchet free and it clattered to the ground. I shoved the blade out of myself and jumped backwards, drawing my own sword as my flesh knit itself back together. I took a look at the patriarch, who was now to my back, and saw that he was occupied with trying to help the matriarch. I need more distance, I thought before two more arrows loosed in my direction. I was able to avoid both, and I strafed in a wide circle around the group of humans until they were all on one side of me.

Two more twangs, two more arrows. One flew just to the left of my head while the other struck my right thigh, sticking in deeply. As if on cue, Mpahray charged me the moment my leg faltered from the arrow, despite Vowteyz yelling something at him and gesturing to stop. The pain from my leg told me that, while it certainly wasn't doing well, I still had the full range of motion so long as I was willing to cause further damage by moving. Mpahray swung overhead again, clearly expecting that I would not be able to dodge. Instead of trying to move purely to the left or right, I stepped inwards and to the right, pulling my blade upwards using my core muscles, legs, and arms in unison against his body's downward motion. I didn't manage to straighten my blade quickly enough to hit both arms, but the combined forces involved caused my strike to cleave through Mpahray's left arm just below the shoulder, splattering both of us with his blood.

Mpahray cried and fell forward against me and another set of twangs sounded out. I felt Mpahray move from an impact at the same time as pain blossomed from my right lung. Shoving the stunned Mpahray off of me, I looked down and saw that an arrow had penetrated my breastplate. Then, motion in my left peripheral drew my attention. Vowteyz's blade blurred in my direction and I jumped back, but too late. My left wrist was caught by his strike, sending new waves of pain into my body and spinning me around. Someone screamed as I regained my balance and jumped back, cradling my left hand inside my right elbow.

Vowteyz took a moment to glance at Mpahray, and I took a moment to glance at my own wound. My left hand was barely attached, hanging on by only a scrap of skin and my thumb tendon. I could see skin growing back from my arm already, and in a panic I shoved my hand back into place using my right inner elbow. Someone screamed again, and I realized it was me. My body was letting out a bloodcurdling war cry all on its own, bubbling blood up from my lungs and out my mouth as it did so. This shocked Vowteyz and the archers enough to cause them to pause, which gave me time to heal.

I stole another glance at my left hand after the scream and saw that the skin had reattached, but I had no feeling in it and no ability to move it at all. A new surge of energy bubbled up from my chest and belly, hot and fierce. An inner voice was screaming against the insult of being injured, and demanding retribution. I only need one hand to deal with you, I said internally, though the voice didn't sound like it came from me. Roaring again, deeper and more focused, I charged Vowteyz while one-handing my sword, ignoring the arrows shot towards me. Neither arrow penetrated at all anyway, and the archers ran backwards to get more distance.

Vowteyz was taken aback as I flew into a series of rough, but incredibly powerful swings in his direction. My mind had gone from cool and collected to bestial, and my vision seemed to darken and block out everything but the ground and my opponent. The clanging of our blades against one another was so loud that I felt like it was damaging my ears, but I could not stop fighting. Vowteyz was easily keeping up with the direction of my strikes, but blocking them was taking massive chunks of his stamina away from just how forceful they were. Each new parry sent a shower of sparks and chips of metal flying between us.

Finally, apparently sensing that he couldn't keep blocking for much longer, Vowteyz counterstruck against a rough overhead diagonal blow I was making from my right side. Using the same technique I had used to cripple Mpahray, he magnified the force of his swing with his core and leg muscles, targeting my blade instead of my flesh. My arm was knocked away and my sword left my grasp, leaving my body wide open, and Vowteyz's mouth curled into a smirk. The rage I was feeling exploded, and I threw myself into a tackle at him, grabbing at his face with my still partially limp left arm and sending us both to the ground. Vowteyz tried to force me off but I was larger than him, and my fingers found a grip.

“DIE!” I howled, reverting to English unintentionally. My right hand turned to a gesture, then my mind directed a pinprick of light to press against Vowtey'z forehead between my middle and ring fingers. New pain surged through my body and more screaming started, though this time it came from a mouth that wasn't mine. Loud pops and sizzles sounded out beneath my grip, and two more arrows dug into my ribs from each side. Vowteyz's forehead blackened and the flesh melted, then the bone blackened too, and the struggling became more severe. As I was forcing energy out I visualized the interior of the man's skull, directing the heat inside his brain now that he was sufficiently stunned. The struggling turned to thrashing, then spasms, then twitching, then stopped.

He might not be dead yet, my mind seemed to say to me as I stumbled to my feet. I grabbed Vowteyz's sword off of the ground, then put it against his left eye socket and forced it downwards through his skull. Blood bubbled out of the wound, steaming and hissing. Another scream to my right alerted me to a one-armed Mpahray charging in my direction with a sword in his hand and blind fury on his face. I reared back and kicked him in the chest, throwing him to the ground, then picked up my sword and jammed it into his heart. I heard two more twangs, further away than the last time, and I felt an impact on my back at the same time as an arrow whistled by my cheek.

Looking up I saw the terrified faces of two archers, both of whom were now a dozen or more meters away from me. I reached for my spear and unhooked it from my back, silently marveling that it was still attached, then threw it at the right archer because he had scored more successful hits. The man was skewered through the upper chest and fell flat with no attempt to rise. I glared at the other archer and began removing the arrows in my sides, tearing apart the new skin that had grown over my wounds while doing so. The man dropped his weapon and ran, and once I removed the arrow from my leg the only two humans left standing were myself and the patriarch.

I removed my sword from Mpahray, watching for a moment to see if he would rise before moving on. As I walked up to the patriarch, he turned to me with teary eyes and drew his dueling sword. The matriarch was limp, only being held up by the spear in the ground, and blood had pooled underneath her. She still bled to death? I asked a voice in the back of my mind, Did I hit the liver, maybe? The patriarch steeled himself, bared his teeth, and charged at me with a bellowing scream. In response I swung my sword horizontally as hard as I could, and watched as it snapped through his pitiful attempt to block, cleaving into his left hip, severing his spine, and very nearly bursting out of his right side at the ribcage. Simultaneously, my whole body exploded again with pain.

The patriarch retched, then gagged, then vomited blood and bile all over my blade and the ground in front of him. His mouth moved like he was trying to form words but no sound came out. Then, legs first, he went limp and collapsed, spilling his organs out of his wound all over the ground. His body made almost no attempt to heal itself beyond the edges of his wounds closing. Such a shame he won't have to justify the results of his stupidity, I hissed to myself as I approached the matriarch and sheathed my sword, then coughed out some of my own blood to clear my lungs.

As I had thought, she was also dead. I pulled the matriarch's body off of the spear and dumped it beside the patriarch's, then pulled Dayvao's spear out of the ground and examined it. It was nearly identical to the spear I had thrown at the archer, but it looked newer, so I slid it into the straps on my back. After a few seconds of looking I found my hatchet, then went to Dayvao to retrieve my knife. The tension began to leave my body, tiredness washed over me, and I had a sudden urge to sleep which I immediately began fighting. Wait! I thought in a panic as I snapped back to alertness, There was another person besides that archer! Where are they!?

All at once, the silence of the night felt almost loud against my still-ringing ears, then was broken by a small sound. I walked in its direction, knife drawn, and heard another small sound. A high-pitched squeaking of some kind was coming from the side of my cabin. I pressed against the back wall, forced the fatigue from my body, then spun around the corner to face the source. A young boy wearing a small-sized guard's uniform was curled up against the wall, sobbing softly with his eyes forced shut and his ears covered by his hands. I recognized him immediately.

“Mihvay,” I said quietly, “what are you doing here?” The boy looked up and me, then screamed and scrambled to flee. Like a fool, instead of moving towards the path away from my cabin he moved into the battlefield, running towards the matriarch and patriarch before collapsing on top of them and breaking into more sobs. I suppose I could use him as a hostage, I thought hazily, the path east is near the other side of town and I could probably get some extra rations. I approached Mihvay with my knife now sheathed and bent down to grab him, before stopping when I heard what he was mumbling.

“Grandma and Grandpa... Like mother and father...” he sobbed incoherently, “It's only a bad dream... You're going to wake up... You always wake up...”