It was late afternoon the next day when we found ourselves crossing a small clearing in the rain. Shahpao had a map that he was using to direct us since we weren’t on a normal road, but since we were supposed to be keeping a low profile I didn’t ask him exactly where we were going. We were still going north though, so presumably we were headed to Kuhtehsh, which made the clearing quite an ominous sign of things to come. Still, at least it isn’t ants, I thought.

The first thing that stuck out as unusual was the number of rats. It wasn’t unusual to see a rat or other small rodent-like animal skittering through the woods, but seeing at least a dozen sets of tiny black eyes poking out from behind bushes and atop the nearby trees behind us made many of the soldiers antsy. The smell came next, hitting us like a wall and making a number of people stagger as they reached up to cover their noses; The combination of rain and trees had kept it from us until the wind changed and blew it in our faces. Finally, we saw the holes that dotted the grassy area, and Shahpao ordered an immediate stop.

“Corpse rat nests,” Vaozey said, and I could tell she was grimacing. Because of our helmets, neither of us could cover our noses, so we simply had to endure the stench. “Must have had a feast recently for it to smell this bad.”

“Seems about as bad as the last time I encountered them,” I replied. Shahpao called over a few of the soldiers, quickly issuing some orders. Six men fanned out, slowly plodding across the grass while jabbing their swords into the ground in front of them to test its stability. “It’s going to take us an hour to get across here at this rate,” I remarked.

“Better than falling in,” Vaozey mumbled. “Or worse, having a wagon fall in.”

“Have you ever fallen into one?” I asked.

“Have you?” Vaozey asked back.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“When did- ugh,” she gagged. “Gods, I can taste it. I think it’s worse than the smell.” I had to agree, inhaling through my mouth was notably more disgusting than just smelling the lingering rot in the air.

“What I wouldn’t give for an air filter,” I muttered. One of the men who was sweeping the ground shouted out, and his foot went straight through the grass under him, plunging down nearly a meter. As he scrambled to pull himself out, rats began to pour out of the nearest nest hole, and the soldiers of the caravan formed a perimeter around the stopped wagons, preparing to fend off the animals. “Should we help?” I asked.

“No, let them do it,” Vaozey replied. “They know enough magic to handle this without much trouble. Besides, they’re soldiers. Doing it for them will hurt their pride. The enemy are only rats, after all.”

“We’ll have to check them over for bacterial infections once they’re done,” I said. “That is, wounds that grow large pus-filled sacs under the skin, or other stuff like that.”

“You really did fall into one of these, didn’t you?” Vaozey scoffed as the soldiers began to hack and stomp away at the rats that were rushing them. A few unlucky rodents tried to leap into their targets and were either cut down mid-air or fried from within magically. “Awsriyah Island?” she guessed.

“Yeah,” I replied. “When I was retrieving the corpse of a dead hunter for Suwlahtk. It was not exactly a pleasant experience.”

“Do your people know more about those kinds of sicknesses too?” Vaozey asked, her tone suggesting that she already knew the answer.

“They’re caused by living things too small for the eye to see without special tools,” I explained. “It was in the biology notebook, along with the tools necessary to view them. In this case, the bacteria feed on magic fuel, making them extremely dangerous. In corpses they probably just process and dissolve the remnants left over in the blood, but if they get into a living person and have access to the blood…”

“They gorge themselves on it,” Vaozey finished, her tone grim. In the battle just ahead of us, the rats were apparently realizing that they couldn’t win, and some were breaking off to flee back to their nest.

“Luckily, there are only a few places on the body where that can happen without the immune system killing them so quickly that they can’t cause problems,” I continued. “That’s the part of your body that’s specifically made to kill microorganisms like bacteria. So, once they’re detected, removal of the affected tissue treats the illness.”

“You had to do that?” Vaozey asked.

“In a few spots,” I nodded. “I also skinned my hands up to the elbow just to be sure.” Vaozey gave a snort of approval, then began walking over to the soldiers, who were putting away their weapons now that the rats had left. I followed a few steps behind her, taking note of who appeared to have been bitten on exposed skin.

“Anyone who got bit, make sure to check yourself over regularly for rot,” Vaozey advised. “If you see anything, cut it off.”

“It will only be skin deep,” I added. “The area may become numb to pain, so check each other, and check again in a few hours to be sure. Avoid touching affected areas as much as possible. Do we have any… what was that stuff that gets put into water to keep it from spoiling called?” Vaozey looked at me for a moment, and I didn’t need to see her face to know she was raising an eyebrow.

“Aangzoylf?” she asked after a moment.

“Yes, chemicals of that variety, the stronger the concentration, the better,” I replied. “They’re lethal to many kinds of bacteria.”

“I don’t know if we have any,” Vaozey muttered.

“Only what was used on our water, but we can get more in Muhryehv,” Shahpao said.

“By then it probably won’t be useful,” I sighed. “If anyone does show signs of infection, make sure to throw their clothes and bedding out. You may also want to char your hands with magic or skin them after touching any infected areas. I’m not sure how readily the ‘rot’ spreads that way, but it’s best to be safe.”

“Of course, ihlzheyv,” Shahpao said deferentially before turning to the soldiers again. “You heard him, rinse off, sweepers back, get six more out! We don’t have all day.”

After crossing the clearing, we quickly came upon the source of the rats’ feast. Only around an hour after we re-entered the forest, a small path became visible in front of us. Since the rain was still falling quite hard and we weren’t quite sure where we were precisely, the caravan opted to follow it. Another half hour later, the path led us to a small village of five houses and a storehouse. Initially, we thought that the villagers were simply waiting inside to keep out of the rain, but the lack of light from inside the houses or smoke from the chimneys indicated what we were soon to find out.

Someone had killed everyone in the village and stripped it bare. There wasn’t a single piece of intact furniture anywhere in any of the houses, nor were there stores of food or wood in the storehouse. There were, however, bloodstains and body parts left behind. Uwrish forensics was quite primitive, but even the soldiers were able to see where some of the residents had fallen and died, only to be slowly taken apart by rats leaving nothing more than a dark splotch of rotting blood and pus behind. What they probably didn’t realize was the young age of some of the victims, which I could easily tell from the few bones left behind.

“Do we wait here?” someone asked. “It’s going to be dark soon, might be worth taking shelter.”

“Too risky,” Shahpao replied. “Whatever happened here, it happened recently. A few weeks at most. No, check everything over again, grab anything worth taking, and then we leave.” There were sighs of discontent, but nobody protested because we all understood his logic.

I went to rest soon after that, finding the bedding in the barracks wagon to be completely waterlogged. Thankfully I didn’t have to get out of my armor, so I didn’t notice it as I laid down to sleep.

“Sixty-four points. Identify compound in provided image.”

“Novichok-5 nerve agent, five hundred milliliter container.” I only know this one because I’ve been corrected after misidentifying it. Why are you asking me this when I can’t read Russian?

“Ninety-eight points. Identify compound in provided image.”

“GD-700 series carcinogenic mutagen weapon. Liquid variant, one thousand times concentration, fifty-liter barrel.” Enough to give an entire city aggressive lung cancer if aerosolized.

“Eighty-three points. Identify compound in provided image.”

“Blue leaf extract, hand processed-” Wait a minute, where did this come from? This isn’t supposed to be here.

“One hundred points. Wake up, ihlzheyv.”

My eyes flittered open and I felt the pressure of a hand on my arm. It took a minute for the strange dream I had been having to fade away and reality to seep back into my brain. Through the small visor on my helmet, I saw one of the soldiers who had been sleeping in the wagon with me trying to quietly rouse me, concern on her face.

“What’s going on?” I murmured, letting her know I was awake.

“The caravan has halted,” the soldier said. “I heard Zownayveht Svaaloyweyl mention your name, so I thought it would be best to wake you.” With a deep breath, I rolled off of the mattress and got to my feet.

“I’ll go see what’s happening,” I said, then I carefully stepped down from the back of the wagon. It was still pouring rain so the stars and moon weren’t visible, but it seemed to be around midnight by the general brightness of the sky. As I walked up along the side of the caravan, I noticed that all of the lanterns had been deliberately snuffed, making it nearly impossible to see anything. We’re hiding, I thought, did we encounter trouble?

“Go get him,” I heard Shahpao whisper as I approached the group at the front of the caravan.

“I’m already here,” I whispered back, and I saw a few soldiers jump at the same time. “Did we encounter trouble?”

“Look there,” Shahpao said, pointing up the road. Barely visible through the rain and the brush, a faint orange light was glowing in the distance, perhaps three hundred meters away. “We sent a scout up to check, and they said that there’s a camp of five Mehtsiyahn Rehvite warriors up there along with a wagon and a beast.”

“We have our fake identifications,” I said.

“They’re the ones who raided the village,” Vaozey growled. “I’m certain of it.”

“Isn’t this Rehvite territory?” I asked. “Why would they raid their own village? That doesn’t make sense.” The looks that the soldiers gave me were strange, for what little of them I could see in the darkness.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shahpao said. “We can’t be seen here by them, we’re too far from the main roads and coming from the wrong direction. It’s suspicious, and they’ll surely report us. It’s also too risky to wait, there’s no guarantee they’ll leave without seeing us.”

“And we can’t go around, the brush is too thick and the ground is too soft from the rain, we’ll get stuck for sure,” someone else added. “Same for going back, the only reason we made it this far is because the path has been getting better as we go.” So we have to kill them, I thought.

“What’s the plan then?” I asked.

“I heard you’re good with a rifle,” Shahpao said. They’re muskets, not rifles, my tired mind complained.

“Yes, but there are five of them,” I said. “Your people don’t have rifles that can shoot multiple shots consecutively.”

“We have twelve rifles loaded and covered,” Shahpao said. “We can’t risk exposing more to the rain, but those ones are ready to shoot. Can you guarantee a killing shot at fifty paces?” I could make a killing shot at well past a hundred in good weather, even with one of those muskets, I thought.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Okay, five minutes prep, best shots only, eleven of you go with him,” Shahpao ordered. “You are to sneak up on the camp, line up your shots, and take out the enemy in a single volley. If anyone survives, the ihlzheyv will finish them off, understood?”

“Yes sir,” all of the soldiers whispered, and they broke off to organize. Vaozey walked over and led me to the back of the weapon wagon, uncovering the muskets that were pre-loaded. They all looked the same, so I picked the closest one and used force magic to stick it to my back, barrel down. Thanks to the wax on the projectile, nothing fell out onto the ground.

“Have you ever commanded soldiers before?” Vaozey asked.

“Yes and no,” I replied. I had given orders, but I was usually placed in subordinate positions when my identities were given.

“Be firm, be precise, don’t use foreign words,” she advised. “Expect that one enemy might survive, those npoytz are pretty tough.”

“Got it,” I replied. Her advice was composed of things I was going to do already, but it was good to know that she and I had similar thoughts. “You want to come too, don’t you?”

“Of course, but if there are five there, there might be more,” Vaozey said quietly. “Safer for one of us to stay behind. Besides, I’m not a great shot.”

A few minutes later, more soldiers came to get their guns and join up with me. Some attached their weapons behind their backs like I was doing, but most just held them in hand normally. Once everyone was armed, they all looked to me for instructions, and I glanced down at the camp again.

“Do you all have training in woodland stealth?” I asked.

“We do,” one soldier replied. “Most of us grew up hunting in woods like these.”

“Good, follow me,” I said, setting off into the brush beside us with eleven men and women in tow. Not a word passed between any of us as we crept through the underbrush, stepping lightly and making so little noise that the sound of raindrops falling and my armor softly clinking was deafening by comparison. As we proceeded, I couldn’t help but once again go back to South America in my mind, recalling other times that I had walked through a rainy forest in the dead of night. I had night vision during those missions though, I thought with a half smile, I don’t think I could make magic do that. Actually, that might be a good thing to test out later.

When we were finally close enough to see the targets under their shelter, I held up a hand. I wasn’t versed in Uwrish military gestures, but everyone immediately knew to stop, which was pleasing to me. Underneath a wide blanket of stitched leather that had been propped up by sticks, two Rehvite warriors sat around a fire while three more lay on the ground, softly sleeping. Not one of them wore any visible armor; instead, they were covered in thick black clothing that at most concealed chain mail. This is a bad angle, I thought, looking at the sleeping targets on the ground, we need to move twenty meters left.

“Is anyone confident in their shots on the conscious ones?” I whispered, looking back at the soldiers behind me. Five of them raised their hands to head level for a moment. “You two, left, you two, right,” I ordered, picking out four soldiers. “Rest of you, with me.”

“What’s the signal?” one of the shooters staying behind asked. I thought about it for a moment. There isn’t a lot of rain hitting us from above, and the two that are up aren’t paying much attention, I considered, I guess a standard light signal will work. Gesturing to the ground, I blinked a small green laser dot three times quickly, making a few eyes go wide. The power draw was minimal, but in the pitch blackness of the forest, it stood out like a lit candle.

“I’ll shine this on that tree,” I whispered, pointing to a spot they could all see. “When you see it, wait three seconds, then shoot.”

“Got it, commander,” the one who asked said. “I mean, ihlzheyv.” This really isn’t the time for worrying about details, I wanted to say, but I kept quiet and brought the seven other soldiers with me as we moved over to get a better shooting angle on the sleeping Rehvites. Once we were in position, I made sure I would be able to give my signal, then turned back to the other soldiers.

“I will shoot the one on the right,” I whispered. “You three, shoot the one in the center. The rest shoot the one on the left. You will fire on my mark after a countdown, understood?”

“Yes, ihlzheyv,” each of them whispered, and they began settling into position. I made sure that every single one of them was still and relaxed, then turned to check the four we had left behind, just barely seeing four blurry shapes in the darkness amongst the trees. Warming up my laser, I directed it at the tree, then blinked it three times once I had my weapon aimed at its target.

“Three… two… one…” I counted down, “fire.” The head of my target exploded first, spewing its contents across the ground and the back of the leather sheet. A tenth of a second later, the rest of the soldiers fired, and four more humans were cut down. Though none of them were as accurate as I was, two musket balls through the center of the torso was as devastating an attack to a human with healing magic as one without, and the other sleepers fared no better. There were several seconds of silence as we waited to see if any of the targets would rise as our ears recovered, but none did.

“They’re down,” someone sighed in relief.

“Stay here,” I ordered, handing the man my gun. “I’ll go confirm the kills. Do not approach until I give a signal.” If I had to put a number on how sure I was that every warrior was dead, I would have said about sixty percent. The sleeping ones were definitely down for good, their wounds hadn’t even begun to heal, but the two who were up fell in such a way that I couldn’t see what became of their wounds. Drawing my sword, I began approaching, preparing two lasers to blind an attacker if one of the warriors was stupid enough to try to ambush me.

When I finally stepped out into the light, I had just enough time to see that one of the two conscious warriors was definitely dead before the other dove off the ground, snarling like a wild animal and grabbing at me with bloody hands that were no doubt prepared to kill me with magic. My sword slipped vertically through the survivor a moment later, splitting him all the way from his head to his sternum and showering me in blood. His body landed at my feet, completely still, and I let the magic fuel I had been gathering for my lasers disperse back into my bloodstream.

Though unbothered by the gunshots, the brief noise made by the engagement bothered the resting pack beast by the wagon, and it started to stir, padding its feet nervously. Do these things ever sleep? I suddenly wondered, glancing at the animal. I hadn’t thought about it much, but Shahpao’s caravan only had one beast per cart and we had gone several days without stopping before we camped out and had the sparring matches. With a gesture, I called over the soldiers from the woods as I sheathed my sword. Maybe they only need to rest every few days, I thought, I’ll ask Vaozey.

“Sneaky ngaazmayjh,” one of the soldiers remarked, kicking the cut-up body of the dead warrior. “Stupid though. All that magic and no brains.”

“Eight of you check the wagon, take note of anything Shahpao might want,” I said. “The rest will help me move these bodies into the woods. Once we’re done, we’ll take down this shelter and return.”

“Yes ihlzheyv,” the soldiers said, following my word exactly. From the faint squeaking that could be heard while we cleaned up, it seemed there was another local nest of rats excited for a feast.

I went to bed soon after we returned since I was feeling the fatigue creeping back behind my eyes once my adrenaline settled down. Thankfully I didn’t have any more dreams, and the physical activity tired me out enough that I was able to fully rest instead of hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness until the sun woke me. When I got up, I saw Vaozey sleeping in a hammock nearby and made sure not to bump into her as I stumbled out of the wagon and into the morning sun. There were still a few scattered raindrops falling on me, but the cloud cover appeared to be breaking up, having depleted itself with its nearly full-day downpour.

After eating, I took up a spot near the rear of the caravan and began walking, hoping that I would eventually feel awake once the sun came out. We didn’t have a sixth wagon, so I assumed that Shahpao had left the one the warriors were using behind, but I didn’t want to go ask about it. Instead, a thought that had occurred to me in the darkness of the woods wormed its way back into the forefront of my mind, and I began to consider it as I stared at the ground through a small ring I made with my thumb and forefinger.

Why can’t I just use magic to change the wavelength of light? I asked myself. The ability to do so would be monstrously useful in almost every situation I could think of, allowing everything from perfect night vision to remote X-ray ability. Yet, as I tried a few different ways to coerce my magic into performing the task, I found that none of them wanted to cooperate. I got the impression that I could probably force the effect to happen if I dumped enough magic fuel into my hand and “pushed” with my mind as hard as I could, but a brief instant of wavelength change was far less visible than a brief instant of something like a laser.

The sun came out just before noon, and the increased brightness finally broke away the last of the tired haze in my mind. We were entering another clearing, much larger than the previous one, and I saw what looked like a proper road snaking along the hills a few kilometers in the distance. I didn’t recognize the area, but if I was right about the path we took we were still a day from Kuhtehsh at least, and quite some distance from Muhryehv. I recalled overhearing something about stopping in Kuhtehsh first during the night, but I decided to wait until we were on the road to ask Shahpao about it.

“Your hand that interesting?” Vaozey asked, peeking her helmeted head out of the wagon.

“Just trying something,” I replied. “We’re almost at a real road, I think.”

“Good,” she said, jumping out of the wagon onto the ground and nearly getting stuck in the mud. “I need some food, you want some?”

“Just a piece of jerky,” I replied. With a nod, Vaozey walked off, then came back a few minutes later and handed me a strip of meat. Eating with our helmets on was annoying, but less so for me because I could use magic to lift it just enough to access my mouth. “Do the beasts need sleep?” I asked.

“They don’t look tired,” Vaozey replied.

“I mean in general,” I clarified. “We’ve run them through the night several times in a row before. Do they need sleep at all? I could have sworn they slept when we made camp.”

“Oh, well, sort of,” Vaozey explained. “They like to sleep every night, but they can go around six days without it before they start to get stubborn. I think the longest I’ve ever heard of them going for is eleven days, and the beast slept for two whole days after.”

“That’s impressive,” I said absentmindedly, looking through my fingers and trying another way to change the color of the light I was seeing.

“They don’t think much, so I’d imagine they don’t get tired at night, just bored because they can’t see much,” Vaozey snorted. “What are you doing there?” My first instinct was to be vague again, but then I remembered that I didn’t have any reason to hide the truth about what I was doing anymore. I suppose secrecy is just a habit for me, I thought.

“I’m trying to change the color of the light going through my fingers,” I explained. “The way we see things is by detecting light bouncing off of them, and the color of the light is based on… let’s call it a certain property of that light. I’m trying to change that property.”

“Huh,” Vaozey grunted. “Why?”

“There are types of light that can’t normally be seen by humans,” I said. “Some of those are useful for seeing in the dark, or even seeing through objects.” Vaozey cackled quietly, taking another bite of her meat, then sighed.

“If anyone else told me that I’d call them an idiot,” she joked. “Your people really know a lot of secrets about the world. Unless Roydlow told you about this, of course. Did he?”

“No, this is from my people,” I confirmed.

“Thought so,” Vaozey grunted. “I don’t see why it should be that hard, considering you can make a light of any color. Changing it should be simpler, right?”

“No, the way I make colored lights is by-” I began. Exciting electrons in the air with specific quantized energy so that they release photons of certain colors, I finished in my mind. That’s why I couldn’t make a laser with a similar method to the glowing orbs. It’s basically electric magic, not light magic, it doesn’t control the photons at all. I felt a bit stupid at the realization, it was very obvious once I had put it together.

“By?” Vaozey prompted.

“I just realized that most of my light magic is actually electric magic,” I said. “Like Rehv’s Binding, I mean. It uses electricity on the air in a specific way to make it glow, so it’s not really light magic at the base level.”

“Does that help you with… seeing through stuff?” Vaozey asked.

“Maybe,” I muttered. “Let’s just walk quietly for now, I think Shahpao just glared at us.”

“Yeah,” Vaozey muttered. “We’re setting a bad example. Better be quiet for a bit.”