“What are you doing?!” Reeve dropped her naginata and fell to her knees at Leaf’s side. She pulled the fallen elf’s cowl back. Leaf’s eyes were wide and her mouth moved soundlessly. Reeve wouldn’t have thought the fallen’s complexion could have gotten any paler than it had previously been.

“Reeve?” Dusk stepped closer and roughly pulled back Reeve’s cowl. “Why do you wear these? We thought you Helia’s guard.”

“So you just shanked us?” Reeve rolled Leaf onto her side. “This doesn’t look that bad. Maybe near her kidney, but I don’t know why it’d have taken her down so quickly.”

Dusk sank to her knees next to Reeve. “My blade was dipped in the venom of the dragə.”

“What?”

Dawn approached the edge of the pool. Her face was twisted with frustration. “My sister distrusts the intentions of these elves, despite their efforts to provide safe haven to those displaced by the unrest in the ruins of Ase Thhia.”

“They’re the reason Ase Thhia’s in ruins!” Reeve pointed at her father, who was standing, face pale, looking down at Leaf. “One of the elves under Walter’s sway told us that Helia assassinated the Royal House and overthrew the empire to build her own.”

Dawn and Dusk looked at each other. Dawn’s frustration turned to horror. Dusk’s horror over Leaf’s injury became the flat mien of regretful vindication.

Reeve looked back to Leaf, but her attention was drawn to the water on which she knelt. “Something’s down there. Coming up. We need to get her off of here.” She quick-crawled to Leaf’s head and hooked her hands under each arm. Standing, she began dragging Leaf’s limp body off the water of the pool. Dusk quickly grasped the fallen elf’s feet and rose to assist.

“Parents, move!”

Startled by Reeve’s bellow, Walter grasped Wanda’s large hand and led her off the water. Thomanji'yheri sidestepped onto the stone and drew his sword as a plume from beneath began to cause the surface of the pool to undulate.

Reeve bent to gently lay Leaf’s upper body down. Dusk dropped Leaf’s feet less carefully and spun toward the pool, beginning to form a spell as she did. Seeing her sister casting, Dawn retreated a few steps from the pool and began casting as well.

Reeve took a pair of long steps and dropped into a slide on her knees, reaching her naginata just as two whitewater cowls began to emerge from the pool’s surface. She pushed herself from the floor and raised the still unfamiliar weight of the modified weapon to a defensive diagonal.

Finishing their casts, Dusk and then Dawn pushed two unseen spells toward the pool, their hands shaping what Reeve hoped was a set of mana shields.

“Dad, talk to them!” Reeve said as the two guards finished their ascent.

“About what?”

“Anything!”

Walter dropped Wanda’s hand and managed a large, if faltering, smile for the two guards, who turned the darkness within their cowls toward him. “Hi, I’m Walter Williams. You look like—“

With a few rapid gestures, one of the guards cast a jet of steaming green liquid at Walter, who covered his face with both arms and stepped in front of Wanda’s fighter, one of the halfling’s knees rising and twisting across his small body in anticipation of the impact, but the spell splashed against Dawn’s shield and vaporized, leaving a sickly green cloud floating toward the ceiling.

“The halfling has no sway,” Thomanji'yheri said from beside Reeve, “and the guards’ intentions are clear.”

Level 4 AIs? Reeve thought. For guards? “Fight time!” She shouted to the party. “Twins, can your mana shields hold their spells?”

“We can repair the shields as they take damage,” Dawn said, “but not indefinitely.”

Reeve advanced toward the edge of the pool, raising her naginata as she did. The guard closest to both her and Thomanji'yheri turned in their direction as the other turned to face Wanda and Walter. From within their robes, the guards drew long, slightly curved white blades.

“Uh. Bone swords?” Reeve said. “Tacky.” She squinted at the weapon as the guard glided toward her. “Ick. It wasn’t even cleaned of all the gore of its previous owner. Who are you people?”

The guard approaching Reeve and Thomanji'yheri pivoted the blade around its grip into an underhand swing, aiming to strike Reeve below her guard. Easily spotting the attack, Reeve parried low. “Dad, Mom, don’t let them hit you. Bone swords usually have poison debuffs.”

“Not that he didn’t try,” Thomanji'yheri said from her shoulder, “but your warning comes too late for the halfling.”

Reeve glanced toward her parents and saw her father already on the ground, lying at the feet of her mother, blood soaking his breeches at the thigh where a long gash ran from hip to knee.

“This sword isn’t working,” Wanda called as Reeve, distracted, parried another strike of the bone sword.

“What do you mean?” Reeve called back. Trying to wrest the offensive from the guard, she followed the parry with a quick slash, which tore through the guard’s robe at the waist but seemed to meet no resistance beneath. “Whatha?” Reeve took a reflexive stabilizing step to the side as she nearly lost her balance.

Standing erect, seemingly unconcerned by the guard closing on her or by her husband’s bleeding avatar at her feet, Wanda used her free hand to point at the blade held loosely in her other. “Before, it just kind of took care of business.”

“Apparently, these guards haven’t been unfaithful,” Reeve said, shifting farther from her previous position so that Thomanji'yheri could bring his broadsword through in a strike meant to catch the guard as it recovered from Reeve’s hit.

“Then I don’t know what to do with this thing,” Wanda said. She waved the point of the sword around in front of her without purpose, but with enough fortuitous direction that the guard advancing on her paused as though trying to analyze the non-traditional fencing style the large fighter was exhibiting.

Thomanji'yheri blocked a lunge from the guard, Reeve thrust with her naginata, and, again, her blade pierced the robe without resistance. When she pulled it back, there was no blood.

“Seriously, what are these things?” She shouted.

“None know the provenance of Helia’s guard,” Thomanyheri said, pausing to duck aside as Reeve blocked a slash of the bone sword intended for the dwarf. “She recruits them without any knowledge of the camp, at least as far as I know, but perhaps such bruit does not find its way to the armory.”

“Twins, maybe we need less defense and more offense?” Reeve called to the sisters, who still stood some distance from the pool, focused on their shields and any signs of magical attacks from the guards.

“Then be prepared to move,” Dusk shouted as she began to circle behind Reeve and Thomanji'yheri, her hands forming a new spell. Dawn circled in the opposite direction, moving behind Wanda and the crumpled body of Walter.

“Reeve, Sweetie, what should I be doing here?” Wanda called, still spinning the tip of her blade through the air in a way that reminded Reeve of a child playing with a sparkler.

“Stab!”

“Move!” Dusk and Dawn yelled in unison.

Reeve and Thomanji’yheri immediately dropped into squats, the bone sword of the guard in front of them whistling above their heads while across the pool Wanda turned to Dawn and said, “What, Dear?”

Eyes wide, Dawn shifted another foot to her right and then released her spell as Dusk did the same, fire jetting toward the center of the pool through small gaps between the mana spells the twins had erected. The flames Dusk emitted struck the guard before her squarely and splashed in all directions, the majority of the reflected flames ricocheting off the inside of the concave shield as Dawn’s spell, which struck the other guard only obliquely, likewise ricocheted around the inside of the shields, the two splashing jets creating a near-complete globe of fire within the confined space.

The jets suddenly stopped, and Reeve whooped and watched as the exhausted shields began to fracture. The flames within slowly dissipated.

“That was sweet!” Reeve called for the benefit of the twins.

“You speak too soon, Ranger,” Thomanji'yheri said next to her.

Reeve’s elation plunged as she saw two humanoid shapes appearing from within the fading flames. The guards’ robes were nearly entirely gone, and the remains of the charred cloth hung loosely on grotesque forms that looked like partially decomposed elves that were more spirit than substance but that still held their bone swords in leather-gloved hands.