I didn’t reply; it sounded to me like the man couldn’t see inside our shelter, which gave me something of an advantage. They didn’t know our numbers, our armaments, and our locations. Of course, that advantage would vanish the moment the bandits or whatever they were moved on us since the shelter wouldn’t actually hold them out, but I thought I could at least make the most of that hesitation.

“What do you all think?” I spoke, activating my Mimic Voice ability as I did and drawling like the sheriff. It was an odd sensation as my voice box suddenly relaxed beyond my control, stretching to allow the deep, slow voice to roll forth. “Any of you got anything to say to these folks?”

“I’ll give them something,” I continued, my voice shifting into Shina’s high-pitched, rapid speech. “Two barrels of something, to be exact, if they don’t hightail it out of here now!”

I continued, mimicking the voices of every person I could recall from Murkburg, including Paisley, Boden, Masani, and even Manas. I saw the uncertainty spreading across the faces of the bandits; as far as they could tell, there were almost as many people camped in the shelter as there were outside of it – and all of them sounded armed, vicious, and ready to attack. Thanks to Sara, I copied not only the sound of their speech, but their tone, mannerisms, and phrasing, words sometimes spilling from my mouth without my volition as she worked to make the impersonation as close to perfect as possible.

“I don’t know about this, Ranjay,” a woman standing beside the leader spoke in a loud whisper that was plainly audible in the silence. “You said there was only two of them!”

“There are,” the man replied irritably. “Leastwise, that’s what Narik said, so ‘less he’s lying, there’s just two.”

“Ranjay, we just heard them!” the woman insisted. “That ain’t two! I ain’t that smart, but I can count that high!”

“Shut up, Murya,” Ranjay growled. “It don’t matter, cause Felli, here, can kill them all, right quick.” He raised his voice. “Hear that? Come on out, or I’m sending Felli in after you – and you don’t want that, trust me. Dying in her belly’s a slow thing and not something any man should go through.”

I lifted the rifle again, this time sighting not on the man but on the woman beside him. I quickly scanned the figures; once I fired, they’d either run or start shooting back, and I’d need to take them out as quickly as possible. I didn’t have enough bullets in the rifle, but between it and the revolver, there were more than enough. My finger slipped the safety off and eased around the trigger, the iron sights unwaveringly pointed at the center of the woman’s chest...

“Ranjay Snaketongue.” I jumped at the sudden voice behind me, and I glanced back to see the sheriff stepping out of his tent, buckling on his gun belt with the shotgun in his hand. “Bandit, murderer, and rogue handler. You’ve got four separate warrants out on you, boy. You looking to make it five?”

“Who the hell are you, the damn sheriff?” Ranjay barked a laugh that only a couple of his men echoed.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said, cracking open his shotgun and calmly loading two shells into it before snapping it shut. “Sheriff Ramka of Murkburg, at your service.”

“Aw, shit, Ranjay,” one of the men whispered. “What the hell did you get us into?”

“Beastshit!” Ranjay snapped. “That ain’t no Sheriff Ramka. If it was, we’d all be dead right now.”

“You ain’t dead because as of yet, you ain’t broken any laws,” the sheriff chuckled. “Now, knowingly attacking an officer of the law? That’s a crime, and there’s only one punishment for it out here in the Gistal.”

Furious whispers broke out among the bandits, and as they spoke, the sheriff moved over beside me. “They’re scared, but not scared enough,” he said quietly. “So long as Ranjay’s there, they won’t run; they’re more afraid of his brassviper than they are of the idea of me.”

I nodded. “I can probably get three or four of them before they get to us if they charge. Maybe they’ll break and run then.”

“They ain’t scared of getting shot, boy,” he chuckled. “They’re afraid of being eaten. Only way to run them off is to take out Ranjay, and you’re the only one of us who can do that.”

I looked back at Ranjay, Analyzing both him and his pet.

RANJAY

PATHS: TAMER, TRAINER, CULTIVATOR

RANK: GREATER

PETS: BRASSVIPER (GREATER)

DOMINIA: 10.4 PERSONIA: 21.4 ARCANIA: 14.0

THREAT LEVEL: HIGH

BRASSVIPER (GREATER)

TYPE: METAL

BOND: 569

ATTACK: 65 DEFENSE: 39 DAMAGE: 76

SPEED: 15 DODGE: 65 HEAL: 17

SPECIAL ATTACK: VENOM BLAST

SPECIAL DEFENSE: BLADE SCALES

THREAT LEVEL: HIGH

I swallowed hard. “Sheriff, I don’t know if I can beat him,” I said slowly.

“Sure, you can. Ranjay’s a damn bandit, not a duelist. He’s like Paisley, only smarter. He don’t know nothing about actual fighting; he got where he is by murdering regular folk, not dealing with handlers.”

I looked back at the man and took a deep breath, then reached into the pouch at my waist for runes. As I did, though, Sara’s voice spoke in my mind.

“John, Metal and Lightning are opposed types. That means the brassviper is more vulnerable to it.”

I slipped the Air Web rune I’d slid out back into the case and took five cards out. I fanned them before me and channeled power into them, sending commands to my pets as I did.

The brassviper hissed as a lash of electricity shot from the shelter and slammed into its nose. Its body thrashed and twisted as the Lightning Whip coursed through it, convulsing its muscles. The people nearest Ranjay swore and jumped back as the creature’s convulsions sent its tail sweeping past them. The long tail slashed across the chest of one of the bandits, and the man screamed hoarsely, clutching a ragged wound that looked like someone took a cheese grater to his nipples.

“Well, that explains what ‘Blade Scales’ are, I guess,” I thought grimly as I pulled out another card and activated it.

A scream rang through the night as my bloodbeak swooped down, unleashing a Cutting Breeze on the writhing brassviper that shattered a few of its scales, drawing its bright blood. A line of water hissed out of the shelter and slammed into the snake, splashing off its scales harmlessly at first but digging in once the Mangy Hide rune settled onto it, dulling its scales as it weakened its defense.

My bloodbeak flashed down under the effects of Deadly Lunge, its Sharptooth-enhanced beak striking not at the snake’s metallic scales but at its black, unblinking eye. The snake thrashed even more as the sharp beak pierced the eye, not blinding it but certainly causing it pain.

“Son of a bitch!” Ranjay shouted, digging into his pocket and pulling out a pair of cards. Power surged into them, then lashed out at Ranjay as my rifle spoke and a small hole appeared in one of them, tearing through the rune and ruining the spell. The card burst into flame, and Ranjay cried out and dropped both cards as the magical fire seared his hand despite his bond’s protections. He shook the hand and sucked at his fingers, his face shocked, and I smiled. Ranjay obviously wasn’t used to feeling pain. I’d just have to fix that for him.

The brassviper recovered at last and rose to its full height, facing my much smaller bonecrusher. The serpent lashed forward, but the ‘crusher twisted nimbly to the side, its dodge stat boosted by my Snakespine rune. It snapped at the snake but didn’t bite – I didn’t want it to hurt itself on those bladed scales – and the snake recovered from its strike and rose back up above it.

My rifle spoke again, and Ranjay staggered back as the bullet smashed into his right eye. It didn’t damage him, but it had to hurt. I’d never been shot in the eye before, but I imagined it wasn’t something you could easily ignore. He grabbed the eye with both hands and ducked his head away, then screamed profanity as the next bullet crashed into his ear.

The snake lashed again at my bonecrusher, but the agile lizard scrambled sideways, then snapped again at the viper, forcing it to recoil and reposition itself. As it rose back into striking position, my bloodbeak streaked down upon it again, slamming a Cutting Breeze across its weakened scales and once more ripping fiercely at its eyes. The snake thrashed and twisted, trying to dislodge the bird, then seemed to recover itself as Ranjay once more refocused on the battle.

“Fuck!” the handler screamed as my rifle roared again, this time targeting his left eye. “That’s my damn eye, you son of a bitch!”

I didn’t bother to tell him that was the point; I simply unloaded another round into his face. As long as he stayed out of the fight, his snake reacted instinctively, and those instincts were easy to predict. It ignored my bloodbeak and focused on the bonecrusher, trying to catch and swallow the lizard, not realizing that the bird was the real danger to it. The bloodbeak swooped down on it again and again, tearing at its eyes mercilessly, while the snapping bonecrusher held its attention.

The snake reared back, and my bonecrusher danced to the side, but the snake suddenly whipped its head up and unleashed a spray of thick liquid at my diving bloodbeak. The bird tumbled crazily as the blast struck it, fighting to stay in the air, and I realized that Ranjay was back in the fight. The handler raised two more cards, charging them with power but shielding them with his hand – then dropped to the ground, spasming and shaking as my Lightning Whip arced into his body.

The snake seemed to hesitate, and my bonecrusher opened its mouth wide, letting loose another Power Jet. The blast of water again splashed off the snake’s hide for a second, but the snake writhed and twisted as the Jet suddenly ripped into its scales, cutting a hole completely through its body. I expected the snake to either strike at the bonecrusher or flee, but it whipped around, its eyes burning into the still-prone form of Ranjay, twitching on the ground in the last grip of the Lightning Whip.

“Call them off, boy,” the sheriff said grimly. “It’s done, and the best thing you can do is let it happen.”

“Let what happen?” I asked.

“What always happens when a handler loses his pet. Just watch.”

Ranjay managed to push himself up into a sitting position as the snake slid toward him. “N-no!” he shouted, yanking the pistol from his side. “Felli!” He lifted the weapon and fired, and the snake jerked as a bullet ricocheted with a clang against its scales. He fired again, but the snake rose up in the air, shifting its heavy coils, its jaws gaping wide. Ranjay rolled to his knees and tried to run, but the snake flashed forward, and the handler screamed as its fangs sank into his side. The snake continued its strike, rolling and coiling its long body around the handler, whose screams slowly quieted as the poison and constriction went to work on him. At last, the man fell still, and I watched in mild horror as the snake released its grip on his side, repositioned him, and slid its gaping jaws over his head. Just before his face disappeared, I saw him blink once; the snake was going to devour him while he was still alive.

The remaining bandits took several steps back, their eyes wide and their faces panic-stricken. One of them broke, spinning around and scrambling into the grass, and that sudden motion seemed to shatter whatever resolve the others had remaining. A few scattered at first, then the rest disappeared, leaving their former leader to be slowly eaten.

I stepped forward and levered the action on my rifle. “Would this thing be good for bonding?” I asked the sheriff calmly. “For either of us?”

“Nope,” he shook his head. “It’s a metal type, which I’ve got some affinity for, but it’s almost impossible to re-bond a beast after the bond’s broken. They seem to know what you’re trying to do, and they’ll drop everything to kill you if you try.” He gave me a look. “You know that he’s probably done this same thing to a bunch of folks, right? Had his viper swallow them alive and let them die slowly in its gut?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, lifting my rifle and taking careful aim. “But I’m not him, am I?” The weapon barked, and the snake’s black eye imploded as the bullet ripped through it into the brain beneath. The creature’s tail whipped about madly in pain, but it didn’t release its hold on the handler. I fired again, and its other eye erupted in a burst of goo and flesh. At last, the snake began to withdraw, but a final bullet – the last in my magazine, in fact – ripped into its brain, and the creature fell still.

I strode forward and grabbed Ranjay’s feet, pulling him out of the serpent’s maw. The man lay on his back, staring up at me blankly, no doubt still gripped in the paralytic poison the snake injected into him. The sheriff walked up beside me and looked down at the man contemptuously.

“What now?” he asked. “You know you can’t just let him go. He’s gonna blame you for all this, and you saving his life won’t matter – assuming that viper’s venom don’t just kill him.”

“Oh, I’m not letting him go,” I smiled grimly, pulling out my revolver and aiming it at the man’s forehead. “That would just be stupid.” Ranjay’s eyes widened, and I suspected that if he could, he’d have begged for his life. The pistol bucked in my hand, and a small hole appeared in the center of his forehead. Thanks to the poison locking down his muscles, he didn’t jump or twitch; his eyes simply closed, and his chest fell still.

“What was the point of saving him, then?” the sheriff asked me.

“I didn’t save him, Sheriff,” I shook my head. “I just chose how he would die.” I holstered my pistol and knelt beside him, rifling through his pockets. The rifle and pistol he carried were both crappy, but I took them anyway since having more guns was better than having less. He had a watch in his pocket that I happily took and slipped into mine, and I took the leather pouch of cards from his belt. I glanced inside and saw a couple dozen runes tucked into it. I didn’t know if I could use them, but if not, Sara could deconstruct them, and I could make some of my own. Finally, beneath his shirt, I found a pouch with several pieces of paper and a few dozen coins, mingled silver, brass, and tin.

I held up one of the pieces of paper and examined it; it was about eight inches long and four wide, heavy and feeling more like parchment or thin cloth than paper. Intricate loops and whorls of some lighter shade I couldn’t make out in the moonlight decorated the entire surface. A glyph in the center had the number five surrounded by the words, “Shahi Sakta Ha Kala”, with a similar character without the phrase in each corner. I flipped it over and saw the other side printed in the same but reversed fashion. It reminded me of currency, which I had a feeling it absolutely was.

“Let me see that,” the sheriff said, holding out a hand. I handed him the bill, and I felt him channel a bit of magic into it. The paper glowed, and the phrase surrounding the central number suddenly rose into the air, hovering above the paper’s surface and glowing a rosy pink. The sheriff nodded and cut off the flow, then handed it back to me.

“It’s real. How much has he got there?”

I leafed through the papers, quickly adding up the displayed numbers. “Twenty-three,” I said at last.

The old man snorted. “Damn fool had twenty-three sonats in good Sarjan bills, and he was still robbing folks? He could have gone to a town and lived well with that money.”

“You said he had warrants out for him,” I pointed out. “Maybe he didn’t want to chance being arrested or executed.”

“Maybe. More likely, he just liked doing what he was doing and didn’t want to stop. It can be hard to put this sort of thing behind you.” He kicked the body once. “You planning on claiming his bounties?”

“That depends. How much are they, and what would I have to do to claim them?”

“I’m not sure about the amount; if he’s hit enough caravans to have that kind of money on him, probably a few sonats, at least. And as for claiming it…” He chuckled. “You need his body – or at least his head.”

I nodded; I had a feeling that would be the case. I rose to my feet, slipping the bills back into what I assumed passed for his wallet. “That can wait for morning, then, I think.”

The sheriff nodded. “I suppose it can.”

I looked over at him as a thought occurred to me. “How did you know?” I asked quietly.

“Know what?”

“That he wasn’t used to fighting handlers? Have you met him before?”

The old man shook his head. “Nope. I only know him from his reputation – and his warrants. I know his type, though. I’ve seen men and women like him a hundred times; handlers who’ve grown strong by terrorizing helpless folk. You could tell by how afraid his people were of him, and how he threatened to have that brassviper eat us alive. He was a bully, and like most bullies, he was a coward at heart.”

“I analyzed him before the fight. His scores were good – especially his personia – but not great. His pet’s stats were still way higher than mine, though. It should have been a lot harder to beat him.”

“Scores and stats don’t actually determine the winner of a fight, boy, as you should well know,” he replied, smacking my shoulder. “You analyzed him; what path was he?”

“A cultivator.”

“Really? Greater path, then.” The old man looked surprised for a moment. “Yeah, I’ll bet his pet’s scores were way better than yours, and his personia was probably in the twenties.” He shrugged. “None of that matters if the handler ain’t in the fight, though. The boosts a pet gets from its handler only work if the handler’s concentrating on helping them. You kept old Ranjay so busy trying to avoid being hurt that he put nothing into helping his pet.”

He looked down at the corpse of the brassviper stretched out next to Ranjay’s. “Most handlers think of themselves as the master of their pets, but the best ones – the greatest ones – know that it’s a partnership. They need you, and you need them. The more invested in them you are, the more you feel like they’re your family and not just your servants, the more you can get out of them, and the less likely they are to do what this ‘viper did if the bond ever breaks.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “Natural talent will take you far, but it’ll only take you so far. Training and practice are what make a man great, no matter what he chooses to do. You have to learn how to use your pets without thinking, to know them so well that you can guide them without even trying. The greatest handlers and their pets are practically one.” He shook his head. “I guess Ranjay didn’t know that, and he paid for it.”

The two of us returned to the shelter, where I built the fire back up for my bonecrusher and headed to my tent at last. The ground beneath me was hard and cool, and the blankets didn’t help much with that, but I’d slept on worse before. As I lay back, I pulled up my waiting notifications and distributed my XP.

YOU HAVE 14,463 UNASSIGNED XP

THESE XP MAY BE ASSIGNED TO THE FOLLOWING PROFESSIONS:

HERDER, BENDER, TRAINER

PROFESSION: HERDER HAS GAINED A LEVEL!

NEW LEVEL: 5

FOR EACH LEVEL OF HERDER, YOU GAIN:

DOMINIA, INTUITION, VIGOR +1, 1 SKILL POINT

PROFESSION: BENDER HAS GAINED A LEVEL!

NEW LEVEL: 5

FOR EACH LEVEL OF BENDER, YOU GAIN:

ARCANIA, REASON, SKILL +1, 1 SKILL POINT

PROFESSION: TRAINER HAS GAINED A LEVEL!

NEW LEVEL: 5

FOR EACH LEVEL OF TRAINER, YOU GAIN:

PERSONIA, CHARM, PROWESS +1, 1 SKILL POINT

“I take it you got all the bond energy from Ranjay, then?” I asked Sara tiredly.

“Yes, John. That also includes all the XP from killing the beasts at the waterhole earlier.” She hesitated. “You don’t seem very happy about gaining a total of six levels, though. What’s wrong?”

“I’m thinking about what the sheriff said earlier,” I admitted. “About how Ranjay power-leveled himself by killing regular people, and how I just did the same thing with those animals at the waterhole.”

“I think it’s probably different, isn’t it? You weren’t trying to be cruel; you were just trying to get stronger so you can do what you have to.”

I laughed softly. “I’m not worried about that, Sara. I don’t have any illusions that I’m a good person. Hell, I was considering having my bloodbeak hunt down the bandits for the extra XP myself.”

“Actually, that might have bumped you up another level,” she admitted. “So, why didn’t you?”

“Because my concern isn’t about whether it’s right or wrong. It’s about whether it’s smart.” I sighed. “What Ranjay did was stupid, really. He made himself look powerful, and compared to someone like Paisley or Boden – someone who didn’t know how to fight – he probably was powerful. His strength was just an illusion, though. It looked impressive, but it didn’t mean anything.”

“What do you mean?”

I frowned thoughtfully as I considered my words. “Back in my old life, I had to deal with security a lot – bodyguards and the like. A lot of people hired bodyguards who were huge, or grotesquely muscled, and I loved it when they did. Those people looked impressive, but because they looked so dangerous, they rarely took the time to actually become dangerous. I always worried a lot more about the little guys who worked security; they got the job because they knew what they were doing, not because they looked scary.

“Ranjay was like that. He looked scary, but he never took the time to actually become scary. He had no idea how to fight because he’d grown by killing, not by fighting.”

“And you’re worried that if you level up by slaughtering monsters, you’ll be the same way,” Sara concluded.

“Exactly. I learned more from the fight with Ranjay than I did from all those hours of bloodshed. It’s the same with the XP I got from those deputies dying. I leveled up, but I didn’t really get any better at being a handler.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to look impressive but really be basically useless in a fight.”

“That makes sense.” She paused. “Do you want me to stop funneling XP from random battles, then?”

“No – at least, not yet. I just need to make sure that I’m treating them like training exercises and not just free XP. If I’d used those monsters tonight to practice having my pets work together, figuring out the limits of their abilities and how different runes affected them, it would have been worthwhile.” I grinned in the darkness. “And if I stop doing that, then you can cut me off. Deal?”

“Deal, John,” she laughed.

I closed my screens and rolled onto my side, making sure my rifle and revolver were both in reach. Images of torn bodies and bloody viscera filled my mind, but I pushed them aside without too much effort. The memory of Ranjay’s single blink before his face disappeared down the snake’s throat, though – that wasn’t so easy to dismiss.

I tried my best to get comfortable on the hard ground. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.