I ducked the mace strike, dropped the brand, wiped my right hand on my already-filthy gambeson, and drew my sword. The woman effectively shifted her weight to unleash a follow-up strike with the clear intention to back me up against the wall. Instead of backing up as she expected, I circled around her in the direction of her swing and aimed a slash with my sword at her elbow where her armor looked weakest. My blade bounced off the chain mail she was wearing, but the impact knocked her arm out of the swing and produced a crunching noise. At least it broke her joint, I thought, if nothing else, I should be able to disable her long enough to get a fatal grab opportunity.

To my surprise, she didn’t even stop moving, and instead roared even louder and unleashed an overhead strike in my direction. It was trivial for me to avoid it, her fighting style was easy to read and her movements resembled baton fighting, but the sheer force behind it would have pulverized any bones it came into contact with. Of course, my armor is useless against her weapon, I grimaced, and I doubt my sword will do much good against the plates of her armor. I aimed a counter slash at her abdomen and was unsurprised as my sword merely dented the plate but did not penetrate it. I could get through, but I’d ruin my weapon in the process, I thought. The woman pushed her advantage, knowing that I would have far more trouble harming her than she would have harming me, and threw out two more advancing blows in my direction.

After ducking her second blow, a horizontal swing at neck level, I kicked to break her knee and force her to the ground. My force-magic-enhanced boot crushed the joint easily, but the woman merely grunted and brought her mace down in my direction instead of falling. I barely managed to avoid being stuck in the head, and the mace impacted my left shoulder. I felt multiple bones break and my left arm went numb, but the woman’s strike left her face open. The pommel of my sword broke the bridge of her nose, finally eliciting a painful reaction from her and forcing her back two steps.

While my left shoulder was still putting itself back together, I stepped forward and kicked the woman as hard as I could in the chest, fracturing my foot and throwing her back another meter onto the ground with a metallic thump. With a cry of frustration, she pushed herself back to her feet as I felt my left arm become movable again and flexed my fingers. She didn’t sever the nerves, I noted, the break must have just pinched them. For a moment, neither of us moved and we sized each other up, then in a flash I whipped a throwing knife at her face, which she flinched out of the way of.

Dropping my sword to the ground since it was mostly useless, I dove in and once again used force magic to enhance a right cross, striking the woman’s helmet and rattling her skull. I followed up with a left uppercut that glanced off her metal face mask, then a right elbow to the temple area to try to knock her out. As my elbow connected, something struck the center of my chest and sent it into spasms. Solar plexus, I grimaced, I forgot I had one of those. While I could function without air for at least a few minutes under ideal conditions, being unable to breathe consistently in combat gave me half a minute at most before I would fall unconscious.

“Wawjhjhaayjh zteyy,” the woman growled in her strangely croaky voice. “Time to get crushed.” Her mace once again swung at my head in a downward diagonal strike, and I knew I was too close to fully avoid it. Thrusting my right hand out flat, I pushed together a mental construct for external force magic, activating it at the last moment before grabbing the mace. My hand was crushed between the weapon and my face, metacarpals shattering against my forehead and sending spots through my vision, but I managed to intercept the attack and render it non-lethal.

The woman’s eyes widened for a moment, and she tried to rip the mace from my grasp, pulling it off my forehead. I want to ask you some questions too, but I need this out of your hands for that, I thought. The force magic helped me keep my grip, and the mace’s already high inertia allowed me to get my left hand onto the handle before the weapon moved very far. The woman also gripped with her left, preventing me from tearing the weapon out of her grasp easily. I’ve been meaning to try a new technique, I thought, I suppose this is as good of a time as any. Magic manifested under my left hand, heating the metal of the mace’s handle.

The sound of sizzling reached my ears, and both I and the woman stared at each other while ignoring the pain we were feeling. She pulled the mace toward her, then let go with her left hand and punched me in the face. Surprisingly weak, I judged, and when she tried to follow the punch with another again I headbutted her hand, deflecting the blow with a crunch and drawing blood from my forehead. The head of the mace was starting to glow dimly, and shimmering air rose from the weapon. I yanked the mace to try to break her grip, and in response the woman kicked me in the genitals, inflicting a large amount of pain but failing to disrupt my grip or magical concentration.

“Stop! Stop!” the man who she had been protecting yelled. The woman’s gaze snapped to my left to look at him, and I also stole a glance before looking back at her. The man was very skinny, almost to the point of malnutrition, and wore the same pleading facial expression he had when being accosted by the adolescents. Taking advantage of her moment of distraction, I grabbed the woman’s faceguard with my left hand and tore it from her mouth. At the same time, she twisted her whole body, compromising her stance for power, and ripped her mace from my grasp then tumbled to the ground again. “Please, stop!” the man cried, throwing himself in front of me and prostrating. “I’ll accept the mark, just stop fighting! ”

A moment of confusion passed as I beheld the man, then I looked at the woman who was pulling herself back to her feet. From just below eye level, her entire face was scarred and mangled. Evidence of third and fourth-degree burns showed all over her cheeks, her lips were barely more than a slit at the bottom of her face, and her nose looked wide and melted. She bore her teeth at me in spite, and I noticed that the largest single collection of scar tissue was arranged in a symbol on her left cheek. Ah, it looks just like the brand, I realized.

“Don’t surrender to this Rehvaem filth you pathetic jhoytvahz coward,” the woman spat. That word means… why would they even have a word that’s the equivalent of eunuch? I wondered, Wait a minute, Rehvaem? Something like Rehvian, perhaps? No, Rehvite would be more accurate.

“Tell me, what does the brand mean?” I asked again, stopping the woman in her tracks. A look of confusion darted across her face, momentarily replacing the rage she had been showing, then she began advancing again.

“Vaozey, please stop!” the man begged without raising himself from his prostration. “He was just toying with you! I didn’t realize someone like him would be here, he’ll kill you!”

“If he does, he’ll have to earn it,” the woman named Vaozey growled back. “It looked to me like he was about to get what's coming to his kind.” I let out a single, mocking laugh.

“If I was trying to kill you, I wouldn’t have bothered trying to disarm you,” I growled back. “The whole reason this started was that I wanted to know what that brand was for-” I pointed to the brand, “-and why those adolescents were trying to use it on that man.” That statement stopped Vaozey again, and her confused expression came back for a longer time.

“It is the mark of ire sir,” the man replied, still prostrating. “As you know, it symbolizes one who has no favor with Rehv.” Well that doesn’t explain very much, I thought, so this was some kind of religious ritual? Non-consensual mutilation? It serves some identification purpose, clearly.

“And you believe in this Rehv?” I asked. “Rehv is a god, correct?” My words seemed to send a ripple through both of the humans, Vaozey especially. The man raised his head and torso from their flat position and looked up at me, clearly trying to find words and failing.

“I thought you said four Rehvites ambushed you, Naomay,” Vaozey said, her tone tense with barely-constrained anger.

“I- I thought-” the man named Naomay sputtered. He turned back to Vaozey, then to the dead adolescents, then looked back at me. “Did you-?” he began.

“Who the seyt are you?” Vaozey snapped at me. “What the seyt were you doing in this alley?”

“Observing,” I answered, ignoring the first question. “At least, initially.”

“So you saw three people about to use a ngpaaljh on someone, and you just sat back and watched?” Vaozey demanded in disgust. Ngpaaljh is brand, got it, I thought.

“It wasn’t any of my business until those three tried to use it on me,” I replied. Vaozey spat on the ground in front of me, then looked at the corpses.

“Her fingers are cut off,” she noted. “Why did you do that?”

“She wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know,” I replied. My implication was clear, and both humans looked back at me. Vaozey looked angry, but Naomay looked scared.

“Please,” he begged again, “I’ll tell you what you want to know, just don’t hurt us.”

“Seytoydh coward,” Vaozey snarled, now disgusted with both of us. “Give me my mask back,” she demanded, gesturing to me. Shrugging, I tossed the piece of metal in my hand toward her and watched her snatch it out of the air and stick it back into place in one motion.

“So then, neither of you are Rehvites,” I said, stating what was now completely obvious.

“Real intelligent, aren’t you?” Vaozey seethed.

“No sir,” Naomay replied at the same time.

“So then, do you know what being ‘favored by Rehv’ means?” I asked, “What are the criteria? Is it based on ethnicity or family? Is it just random?” Why did the adolescents call me detested? I wondered, It couldn’t just be that I wouldn’t display my magic, could it? For some reason, I felt as though I had half forgotten something, and was on the cusp of remembering it.

“Why do you care? You clearly aren’t,” Vaozey said, still angry but also slightly curious.

“To be favored by-” Naomay began.

“Shut your seytoydh mouth Naomay,” Vaozey snapped. “Don’t you say another word of that drivel unless you want me to bash your skull in myself.” Naomay shut up, then looked at me pleadingly.

“They attacked me after asking that I show them magic,” I said, gesturing to the corpses with my head. “I lit a piece of wood on fire, that was apparently the wrong answer.”

“Heat magic is the lowest form,” Naomay mumbled quietly. “Even a beast can manage to light a fire, such feats are below those favored by-”

“I told you to shut your mouth!” Vaozey exploded, raising her mace and making for Naomay, who scrambled to get away from her. She didn’t even let it cool down, I noticed, it’s still superheated, it just isn’t glowing anymore.

“I would rather you not kill the person who is answering my questions,” I warned, drawing a throwing knife and hovering it in a ready-to-throw position. I wasn’t sure if I could hit her in the upper face before she reacted, but the threat worked anyway. Vaozey snarled at me, then looked to Naomay and kicked dirt in his face. It seems as though she dislikes him almost as much as the Rehvites, I thought. “So then, I should have performed some other type?” I asked, sliding the knife back into its holster as Vaozey backed down.

“You should have just used that little trick,” Vaozey hissed, gesturing to my knives. “They probably would have asked you to hold him down while they branded him, and he would have deserved it for being such a sniveling sycophant.” I’m glad I read that book on the boat, I thought, I never would have known what zoytersaalm meant otherwise. Sycophant is such a specific word too, it's interesting that Uwrish has almost an exact equivalent for it.

“I see, so then the two of you are incapable of external force magic?” I asked. Vaozey grumbled something under her breath, then holstered her mace into its belt loop. I would have assumed she was using magic to swing the mace around like that, I thought, but I could have done it without magic, so maybe she’s just very muscular under that armor. It could also be that she just doesn’t know how to use force magic externally. “Have you simply never been taught?” I asked, now very curious. Koyl says that he has trouble with magic, but he’s not incapable if given time, I thought, Then again, I haven’t tried to teach him anything he doesn’t know, like the light magic or cooling things down.

“I don’t need seytoydh magic,” Vaozey snapped. “I wouldn’t use it even if I could, but I’d love to be able to take it away from people like you just so you could experience what it’s like. A smug npoyt like you would probably scream like a niyzao when the Rehvites found you.”