The man with a bow fired an arrow at Eli, but as it sailed through the air the arrow withered into rust and rotten wood. The remaining rusted dust and mush harmlessly splashed across his face. He looked back to see Andromeda’s outstretched hand.

Eli wasting no time in retaliating, he held his spear with a thrower's stance and hurled it with incredible force. It screamed through the air and passed within inches of the archer's head. It embedded itself in the man’s quiver, incidentally severing the strap.

Eli jerked his hand back and the spear came flying back to him via the string and wrist strap. The quiver fell to the ground and splayed its contents everywhere. As the archer scrambled to recollect his ammunition the other two advanced on the pair.

The first to come to blows was Andromeda and the man with the dagger.

The man first opened with a volley of slashes. He moved quickly and wasn’t a novice, using the light weight to press advantages that a sword wouldn’t allow. Andromeda focused on moving backward to take advantage of the short range.

He was moving too much and too quickly for her to try and destroy the dagger with Expliza Mending, so she had to bide her time until she had an opening. Sensing the weakness, the man took a surprise stab forward that just barely missed Andromeda’s ribs, the baggy nature of her robes creating a facade that allowed her to survive.

Taking the sign, Andromeda turned and ran back toward the wagon. The man followed her suspecting that she lost her nerve and was trying to flee. He chased after her back to the overturned wagon. She ran under the covered side and out of the man’s line of sight. He knew that there was no way to get out of there.

Once the man made it to the wagon he dove inside to grab Andromeda, but saw inside that no one was there. Above him he heard the sound of the old wood creaking and then felt a kick to his lower back. He was sent flying forward and for a moment thought his head would bounce off the boards inside, but to his surprise he went flying through it. But it didn’t feel like the boards were solid, they were rotten.

Andromeda put both hands on the side of the wagon and quickly focused, then the entire wagon started to decompose at an exceptional rate. Moments later it came crumbling down in a mash of rotten wood compost and rusted nails.

She reached down and picked up the dagger the man had dropped when he was kicked through and tossed it deep into the woods.

The man stood up and looked around for his dagger, only to not find it. When he saw Andromeda standing with her fists raised. Lacking any other options he put up his own and prepared for a fist fight.

Back to Eli, he was rushed by the man with a sword and shield.

Eli’s spear was made of wood and not especially good for piercing a reinforced shield. Lacking a better option he folded it back in half and used it as a makeshift baton.

The man’s first action was to try and disable Eli by bashing him with a shield charge. Eli dodged out of the way at the last second and turned to try and bash the man with his makeshift spear baton. The man turned quickly and blocked the strike with his shield.

Eli felt a twitch in the air and instinctually turned, he lifted his folded spear up and an arrow embedded itself in the shaft. Before he could react to that, he saw a flash of white and fell to the ground. The man used his shield to knock Eli to the ground while he was distracted. The spear, having been damaged already, shattered in the fall.

“RED!” Andromeda yelled at the top of her lungs.

She kicked the man she had been fighting in the knee and followed by kicking him to the ground with her boot to his chest. She whipped around and reached toward the bow in the archer’s hand. The bow crumbled in the man’s hands.

Andromeda mended the bow from a distance and brought it to her hand. The man she was fighting had managed to get to his feet by this point, but was knocked right back down when she broke the bow over his head.

In the chaos, the man with the sword and shield got distracted and didn’t notice that Eli had managed to crawl back to his knees. Eli swept the man’s feet out from under him and grabbed the sword. He tossed it out of reach and then reached for the shield, the man was so out of it from the fall that he didn’t react until a moment before Eli struck him with his own shield.

At the same time, Andromeda had managed to get her opponent on the ropes and winded. He tried one last time to try and tackle her, but he didn’t have the strength to move faster than her. She jumped out of the way and raised her hand toward the wagon (which was now a pile of compost) and mended it from a distance. The full wagon was restored to perfect condition in a few seconds, just in time for the man to bounce his head off of it and knock himself out. Andromeda sighed in relief and turned back toward Eli and the rest. She was happy to see had gotten his end of the situation settled up.

She walked up beside Eli and rested a hand on his shoulder to catch her breath. In front of them was the now disarmed archer and the man who was this group’s boss. To call him angry was an understatement, even rage was insufficient. He seemed to be consumed by white hot fury that boiled over and burned everything around him.

Two of his men were on the ground, another was useless without his weapon, and one was missing entirely. This was supposed to be a simple shake down so they could be back to camp before noon. But his entire squad got folded like cheap paper in only a few minutes.

He drew his sword, a massive, hulking lump of metal that was as much like a sword as a sharpened boulder. He let it drop to the ground with enough force to echo through the ground and resound in their feet several feet away.

The man didn’t even speak, he growled at the archer beside him. The archer got the message and took off in the same general direction that the man from before had.

He turned back to Andromeda and Eli and something surprising happened. He laughed. It was a short laugh, more of a chuckle, and he shook his head.

“What are they feeding you kids these days? Of all the folk who I expected to flatten my boys, a wet-behind-the-ears merc and a little mage girl who can barely do a lick of magic were not among them.” The man said. Andromeda cursed herself for yelling when she did and confirming her identity. Eli on the other hand was still just trying to work over the headache he got from being bashed over the head.

“Now I have to kill you two, carry these useless bastards back to base, and work over how I’m gonna explain to everyone how we got our asses handed to us on a 5-to-2 advantage.” The man continued.

“How about you just take your losses and walk away. Neither me nor him wanted this to begin with.” Andromeda said. She thought that the guy already worked it out so there was no reason to stay quiet.

“If I recall, that little bastard called me a “fat sack of bandit shit”, I might not be one of those fancy mages up in college, but I know that’s not how you make peace.” The man said. Eli kicked himself for letting his emotions get the best of him. Emotions were high and that was on him for not controlling it.

“Are you willing to risk getting hurt over your pride?” Andromeda tried to reason. Not knowing that she pressed one of his buttons.

“Pride? Do you think I do this for my health? This is my job, I’ve got kids and a wife. Do you? I’m sure some high and mighty mage like yourself hasn’t needed to worry about keeping food on the table.” The man said. Andromeda was at a loss for words. She almost felt bad until she remembered that the man was still in progress trying to rob them.

“You know, I don’t even know why I try. It would be so much easier to slit your throats in the night. But no, I have the basic decency to give you the chance to live.” He continued. Despite his demented methodology there was some twisted logic to it. That didn’t make it any better that he was still threatening to kill people, but…

“That’s not the point”

She remembered what Eli said earlier. She had threatened someone’s life not five minutes before, and now she was trying to take the high road. She was under no illusions about being the same as a murdering bandit, but the fact that the comparison was made was enough.

“I get you, I do. But we’re past that now. If you let us walk away then we can settle this. Nobody wins if we fight.” Andromeda said.

“Too late, put ‘em up girl. Someones gonna die today.” The man said.

Then he picked up the massive sword with one hand.

“And it ain’t gonna be me.”

The man ran at Eli with almost inhuman speed. Eli barely managed to dive out of the way when the greatsword came down and embedded itself in the ground.

Andromeda tried to use Expliza Mending to decay the sword, but no matter how hard she tried to focus the sword wouldn’t give. The blade glowed with a faint green glow, something Andromeda recognized as the glow she saw around when using regular mending. His sword was enchanted.

Eli picked up the shield that the other man was using before. But when he picked it up the man swung around and kicked Eli to the ground. He used the momentum to pull the sword out of the ground. He stood over Eli with and raised his sword. It was so large that it blocked out the son and casted a shadow on Eli’s face.

Then something fell off his arm, one of his armored gauntlets fell to the ground. Seizing her opportunity while he was distracted she ran at him and grabbed his arm. He tried to shake her off while Eli rose to his feet.

It didn’t take much to throw her away, she was not very large to begin with and was not nearly as strong as the hulking man she was holding on to. She went flying and tumbled on the ground several feet away.

…

Eli felt something inside his chest. It was somewhere between fear and anger. It was the strangest feeling he had ever felt. Words could not describe it, and Eli was not a verbose enough man to try. All he could say was that he felt something he didn’t know.

For a single brief moment he felt the fog in his mind move aside, and he felt total clarity for the first time in what felt like forever. Eli tossed the shield away.

The feeling faded away and he moved without thinking. He pushed his open palm forward toward the man. It wasn’t even a punch, from his perspective he was just moving his hand forward, palm outstretched.

When the hit landed, the man buckled over, nearly losing the grip on his sword. He looked down to see Eli staring blankly forward.

The armor on his chest fell off, the leather straps holding the plates seemed to have rotted already and were knocked loose by Eli’s punch. Eli felt the peace in his heart fade away. The fog returned and seemed to ignite in his own mind.

Eli wrapped his arms around the man and started pushing him. The man tried to resist Eli’s force but was pushed back several feet before losing his footing. Eli lifted the large man off the ground and carried him several more feet before jumping forward and slamming the man hard into the ground.

The impact caused him to drop his sword to the ground. Eli stood back up while the man tried to catch his breath.

There was nothing in his mind at that moment but the fire that's burning inside him. He didn’t even know that he was picking up the sword, only that doing so was making the burning less intense. He reached down and grabbed the sword.

Andromeda looked up from the ground to see that Eli was holding the giant sword over his head, poised to drop it on the man before him. She frantically thought of any way of stopping him. She already knew that she couldn’t destroy the sword. In the back of her mind she could feel White’s wordless screaming.

Eli reared up the sword, prepared to end the conflict here and now. In his mind he wasn’t thinking at all. All he was doing was appealing to the burning fog in his mind.

Then the sword came down, the horrific clash of metal against metal rang out throughout the forest. Eli’s mind cleared and he saw what he had done. The man lay on the ground, the massive greatsword Eli was holding was embedded in the shield he held earlier. The shield saved the man’s life, but the incredible impact had knocked him.

Andromeda couldn’t believe her own eyes. While she scrambled around to any way of preventing Eli’s attack she saw the shield he tossed away. Without even trying to think, she reflexively tossed the shield in Eli’s direction. She wasn’t even sure what it might accomplish, but she did the only thing she could focus on at that moment.

The shield flew through the air and just so happened to pass in front of the massive blade as it came down, when it impacted the man instead of mincing him with the edge the relatively less dangerous shield hit him instead, acting as a large hammer than a sword.

The man slumped over and Andromeda ran to his side, she checked his pulse to make sure his heart was still beating. The screaming inside her mind ceased when felt it. The sword dropped to the ground with a weighty clunk. Eli stumbled back until he fell down.

“D-d-d-d-d-d-” Eli muttered. His eyes flickered back and forth like a madman, his mind barely able to process what he just did, as he thought he just took a man’s life. Andromeda ran to his side and tried to rattle him from this state.

“Eli! Eli, listen to me!” Andromeda said. He was going into shock. If she didn’t do something quickly then this would lead to a trauma.

“I-I-I-I…” He mumbled.

“Eli, he’s not dead!” She said, Eli flinched and turned to her jerkily. She pointed toward the man laying on the ground and Eli saw his large chest slowly rise and fall.

“Bu-Bu-” Eli said. A semblance of rationality returned to him.

“You didn’t hit him with the blade.” Andromeda said.

He looked again and saw the massive gouge in the metal of the shield that laid beside the man. The burning in his mind faded somewhat and finally gave him enough relief to let him fall unconscious.

Andromeda looked around her, there were people and weapons scattered everywhere, things were damaged or destroyed and there was nothing to show for it. This whole thing was pointless and wasteful, nobody won.

She shook her head, old memories of a different life passed through her mind. She wandered around gathering various pieces of weapons or armor she wanted, and picked the pockets of the unconscious men who attacked her. She felt a little bad about looting her enemies, so she left a few gold coins on each bandit. Maybe it would keep them from following after her.

Once Andromeda gathered all that she was interested in taking, she hoisted Eli’s unconscious body onto her shoulders and slowly continued her way down the trail. It didn’t matter who it was or why, people found reasons to fight. Through two different universes that fact never changed. None of that was new to her, what this day did teach her was that she should not make things worse. She had things to lose now. A promise to a friend, a gift from another, and a connection with another side of herself.

On top of all of that, she had someone she needed to keep alive.