That’s not normal, I thought, zooming my vision out back to its normal field of view. Out of all of the lensing magic techniques I had figured out in the days since I discovered that the magic was possible, the tiny telescoping lenses in my eyes were turning out to be the most useful. With only a little bit of practice, using them had become as simple as doing the same action with a pair of robotic eyes, and the power consumption was so low that I barely noticed it. It didn’t even feel like magic, instead, it felt like something my body should have always been capable of doing.

Making my way up to the second cart, I found Shahpao napping in his seat, gaining precious rest while one of his soldiers took the lead. Since the beasts were somewhat intelligent animals it wasn’t as though they needed constant instruction to follow behind each other in a straight line, just nudges every once in a while, so it wasn’t disruptive for him to be out. Gently, I nudged him on the arm to wake him up, then waited until his eyes were fully open before speaking.

“There are some ants watching us,” I said, and Shahpao’s drowsiness vanished in an instant.

“Where?” he grunted, clearing his throat and taking some deep breaths to wake up faster.

“It’s probably not serious,” I said. “I’ve been watching the treetops today for birds since we finished packing the rest of the birdshot, and I’ve seen seven of them in the last two hours displaying behavior that indicates taking notice of our presence.”

“Seyt, if you saw that many then-” Shahpao started, his eyes widening.

“I’ve been using magic to enhance my vision,” I said, cutting him off. If another soldier had seen seven separate ants watching the caravan it would have indicated a potentially serious issue, but I was working well beyond the limits of natural human sight so it wasn’t the same for me. “There could have been more, but if the issue was as bad as you’re thinking I would have seen more signs. For now, we should probably just be careful, because we are definitely being passively observed.”

“We have to set down in two days to let the beasts rest,” Shahpao said, looking up at the trees. “We could run them ragged but they weren’t in good shape in Muhryehv so it’s wiser not to. Keep an eye on the environment until then and tell me if anything changes.”

“Of course,” I nodded.

Two days later, in the late afternoon, we set the caravan down in a clearing along the side of the road. We were a little over halfway to Towrkah, and the density of ants had reduced, so it was a good spot to stop for more reasons than one. Using the shotgun ammunition that I had made, a small team of the worst shots out of the soldiers went out to hunt for food while the rest of us set up some tents and gathered water from a nearby creek into empty barrels. The faint sounds of distant gunshots could be heard a few times before sundown, but they were sufficiently muffled by the trees that it wasn’t likely anyone could locate the source. I still had my concerns, but Shahpao thought it would be fine.

As we were starting up our campfires, the hunting team returned with three entire deer and a number of birds, grinning with pride and smug satisfaction. From the wounds on the deer, it looked as though the buckshot was more lethal than I had expected, and when we butchered the animals and removed the organs I saw that all three animals had significant numbers of pellets in their hearts and lungs. My experience with shotguns allowed me to remove every single pellet from the meat so that nobody got a surprise during their meal.

Just like during the previous stopping point, the soldiers got to playing various rowdy games after eating. One of the most popular ones, and one that hadn’t been played last time, involved one soldier balancing the skull of the deer on top of his head with force magic and running around while everyone else tried to grab it away from him. Vaozey and I didn’t participate this time, mostly because we were both keeping our armor on. Though our caravan now appeared almost entirely legitimate by most accounts, if two famous faces were to show up anyone passing by would be suspicious.

“I’m just going to find a bush, I’ll be right back,” I said, getting up from the stump I was sitting on and walking into the woods behind me. The light of the campfires didn’t reach very far past the edge of the clearing, but that was the point of finding a private spot a dozen or two meters away. Once I had my tree selected, I walked up, stopping one step short as a strange feeling went up my spine. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew someone was watching me. I was about to put up my hand and make a light, but I hesitated, not wanting to break my cover. That delay gave my observers just enough time to shoot me.

The crossbows they were using must have been different models from the normal Uwrish ones because they didn’t make a loud snapping noise when they shot. Instead, six bolts sunk into me in near-silence from all directions, striking me in both legs, my right arm, and my neck. A seventh bolt rebounded off of my breastplate but would have struck me in the right lung if it had penetrated. One of the bolts in my neck happened to nick my spinal cord and I briefly collapsed to the ground, a fact which turned out to be beneficial.

“He dead?” a man grunted quietly. I didn’t recognize the voice, but its pitch indicated a rather large man. Using force magic, I shifted the bolts in my neck around to move them away from my spine, then began directing my healing magic towards restoring my ability to move. A foot fell in front of me, covered in sticks and leaves, and my eyes darted up just in time to see a mace coming down for my head. I didn’t have time to catch it properly before it smashed into my helmet, but somehow I retained consciousness by a thread.

“He will be, and he’s out, look at him,” the mace-wielder said, his faint voice seeming to reverberate in my skull as I tried to stop feeling like I was spinning. “Only one more kehpveht, the conscripts should go easy, one way or the other.”

“Think they were the ones with rifles earlier?” the first voice asked. I’m going to have a talk with Shahpao after this, I thought.

“They don’t have ‘em out right now if they were, and they’re military so I doubt it,” the mace man snorted. “Everybody load up, try to keep the bolts to the head or limbs. We’re trying to profit here and we don’t know what they’ve got yet, so keeping the armor in good shape is a good idea.” Bandits, I thought, it’s been a while since I’ve seen any. Using some tubes of lensing magic, I quickly peered out of my helmet and surveyed the group. I was surprised to find that there were sixteen of them in total, all in ghillie-suit-like attire which made them very difficult to spot.

I also looked down at myself to assess the damage, and I could see why the mace man assumed I was going to die. In between my caved-in helmet and the two arrows through the neck, I could hardly believe I was still conscious. Slowly, and carefully, I began using force magic to push the bolts out of my body when the bandits weren’t looking. Then, once they were all past me, I rose up off of the ground and drew my sword with my right hand, levitating blades out of my new holster with my left. It had been a while since I used force magic for ranged attacks, but I didn’t feel like I had lost any skill at it.

I took down three bandits with projectile daggers to the back of their necks before one finally noticed the sound of a nearby ally falling, and another four before someone finally shouted and all hell broke loose. The camp still hadn’t noticed the bandits approaching, so the only person who was immediately ready to jump into action was Vaozey. In between the nine remaining bandits, five of them shot their crossbows at her, while four turned to try to shoot me. Neither attack was particularly effective, though for different reasons. I avoided all four shots by moving out of their firing lines, while Vaozey just let the bolts hit her, knowing they wouldn’t do more than scratch her armor because of her magic.

It was as I was beheading a man with my sword that I finally got a good look at how Vaozey fought when put against someone who wasn’t as powerful as her or myself. The first bandit she punched simply flew from the ground as though he weighed no more than a child, smashing spine-first into a tree behind him and vomiting up chunky blood on impact. The second bandit’s head popped like a ripe melon from a backhand. The third bandit, the final one I saw die before my attention was pulled back to my own combat, caught a chop from Vaozey’s hand on his collarbone. His body deformed like putty around the blow, skin splitting and shearing.

The mace man, seeing what I did to his comrade, rushed up to me while screaming something about killing me again, raising his weapon up in anger. His clumsy motions looked almost like they were in slow motion to me, and before he could even finish his attack I split the top quarter of his body from the rest of him in a single swing. His remaining two comrades weren’t as slow as him, avoiding the daggers I launched at them by mere centimeters and tossing out some kind of counter-attack weapons. Once I walked between the two projectiles and killed the second to last bandit, they exploded, and I realized they were probably supposed to be some kind of primitive distraction explosive as a wave of sand spattered my back.

“Leave one alive!” Shahpao yelled, and instead of killing the final bandit, I grabbed him—or rather her as I realized when I heard her voice—and electrocuted her into unconsciousness. That turned out to be a good decision because when I looked back at Vaozey I saw that the bandits she had been fighting were all most certainly dead. I dragged my unconscious captive by her hair back into the campsite, only realizing just how much blood was dripping off of me from the reactions of the soldiers, and tossed her in front of Shahpao.

“We have spare helmets, right?” I asked, wiping my sword off, putting it away, and then removing the mangled piece of steel on my head. It’s a good thing they’re smart enough not to make these skintight, I thought as I got a good look at the dent in the light for the first time. Were it not for the air gap and padding in the helmet, I would have had metal in my frontal lobe.

“Yes, we do,” Shahpao sighed. “Seyt, of all the things to happen, a bandit attack on a well-traveled road was the last I expected.”

“Did someone hire you?” Vaozey growled beneath her helmet. The female bandit was still limp, but it was obvious that she was only pretending to be unconscious from her breathing patterns. She had been unconscious for a while though, during which we had tied her up with chains and dragged her deeper into the woods for interrogation. Shahpao and some soldiers with shot-loaded muskets were also nearby but hidden from sight.

“We know you’re conscious,” I added.

“Seyt you,” the bandit spat. “My friends will be here any minute and you’ll all be dead.”

“Unlikely,” I replied. “It’s been three hours, you have no backup.” It had only been forty minutes or so, but she didn’t know that, and the expression on her face told me she wasn’t sure if I was lying or not, meaning she was definitely lying back backup.

“I will peel you like a fruit you bandit teylm,” Vaozey snarled. “I am not a patient woman at the best of times, and these are nowhere close. Who do you work for?”

“We’re an independent unit under the command of Pehrih-” the bandit began to recite, but she was interrupted by Vaozey backhanding her. After the display during the fight, I realized just how much Vaozey held back to avoid knocking the bandit out again.

“You are no such thing,” Vaozey stated. “How did you know about us? Who do you work for? Are you using the ants?”

“You Mehtsiyahns are all alike,” the bandit scoffed. “You think you’re all so smart, so skilled, so powerful, but you’re just a bunch of-” Vaozey cut her off by backhanding her again.

“Answer the setoydh question!” she yelled.

“Let me try,” I advised, gently pulling Vaozey back by her shoulder and taking the front position. Vaozey’s strikes to the bandit’s face had wiped off some of the dirt she was covered in, revealing a number of burn scars on her face. “Mark of ire?” I asked, gesturing to the bandit’s face.

“Not every burn is a mark,” she shot back.

“How did you find us?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.

“Like I told you, we work for Pehrihnk,” the bandit taunted. “You stupid npoytz have really gone and seytm yourselves now. You’re going to be neck deep in shit by tomorrow afternoon when we don’t report back to camp.”

“I highly doubt that,” I replied. “It seems to me that you’re likely just an independent group, but my companions would prefer to be sure. I don’t believe that torturing you will get the truth from you, you see, because I know enough to know that under sufficient torture you would admit to anything. Everyone else in this caravan, however, disagrees with me.” Placing my hand on the woman’s shoulder, I waited to see if she would try to shock me. When no shock came, I sighed.

“If you expect me to beg for my life or debase myself…” the bandit murmured. I shifted my grip, and she flinched underneath it.

“You can’t use Rehv’s binding,” I stated. “So you are, at most, a low-ranking follower. A useful tool, not someone who should have loyalty to a cause.”

“Maybe I just don’t want to use it right now,” she retorted. I felt a bit of heat on my hand as she tried to burn me, but failed to do anything substantial. When smoke started to come out of my gauntlet, I realized it was because she was trying to use “fire” magic, not “heat” magic. In response, I cooked a line of flesh under my palm, hearing the bandit gasp in pain. Something about the noise sounded off, but I couldn’t identify what.

“Enough of that,” I said. “Are you even a Rehvite? This is pathetic.”

“Seyt you, big man,” the bandit growled. “You’ll kill me all the same after you have your way with me. It doesn’t matter what I say.”

“This is going nowhere,” Vaozey snapped, ripping her helm off and tossing it on the ground. “You know who I am?” It took a second before the bandit recognized her.

“You’re the madwoman of Owsahlk?” the bandit gasped, her eyes going wide. “But then, what are you doing out here? Wait, did you think we were working with your enemies? I swear, we didn’t know who you were. You can let me go, I won’t tell anyone you were here, I promise.” The bandit tried to get to her feet, but I pushed her back down, sensing the inauthenticity in her voice and actions. It was strange to see someone lie so poorly, and my human side found it unnerving for some reason.

“Quite a performance,” she remarked. “Too bad I’m not buying it. A better liar than you’ll ever be is the one holding your shoulder right now. Try again.” Almost immediately, the bandit’s whole demeanor changed. The awestruck expression she had put on vanished, replaced with a slack and neutral one, and she rolled her eyes at us.

“Teylm,” she snorted, sounding more like she was caught in a white lie than a life-or-death situation. At the same time, her eyes were darting around all over, searching for an escape route.

“Just kill the ngoyth,” Vaozey sighed. “She’s a zaeternaaf, we’re not going to get anything out of her. Every second we spend talking to her is just a chance for her to try to mess with us or break out and attack us. That’s all monsters like her good for.”

“I agree,” Shahpao said, stepping out of the woods with his musket. “Our scouts just reported back, one found their camp. It’s empty. They were just bandits, not even very good ones by the looks of things.”

“I could still join you,” the lone survivor offered. “I love killing, and I’m very good at a lot of things your boys would enjoy.” Her darting eyes locked onto Shahpao and she licked her lips, smiling in a way that was probably meant to be enticing.

“Not a chance,” Shahpao growled, pointing the gun at her. The bandit didn’t even blink, and a moment later her head was in pieces and all three of us were covered in another layer of gore. “I didn’t think it would be so messy,” Shahpao muttered, wiping blood from his eyes.

“From close ranges, shotgun wounds are often much more destructive than wounds from single projectiles,” I advised. “For executions, you should probably use something else.”

“Noted,” Shahpao grimaced. “Thank the gods we gathered water earlier, I would not want to have to sleep like this.” Lighting up an orb above my hand, I quickly checked the woods around us for ants.

“Doesn’t look like we had any extra observers,” I concluded aloud. “They might find the bodies though, since they’re in the area.”

“So long as we’re gone by morning, it won’t be an issue,” Vaozey replied. “After all, ‘Rehvites’ like us kill bandits all the time. It’s normal, even expected. If anyone comes across the bodies, they won’t give them more than a passing glance. If they knew we killed them, they might even thank us.”

I was woken up early the next morning by a panicked soldier and in a haze of half-sleep I was led over to the spot where we had stacked the remains of the bandits. All atop the pile of corpses, a shiny undulating black mass was visible, slowly picking them apart. The eyes of the bodies, at least those that had remained, had already been torn out and were being used as pathways for the ants to reach the inside of the skull and access the nutritious brain tissue.

Other soldiers in our caravan were standing some distance away, holding loaded muskets and looking nervous. As I approached, the mass of ants began to slow their movement and hiss, increasing in volume the closer I got.

“You can talk to them, right?” Shahpao asked from behind me. “Zownayveht Svaaloyweyl is still asleep, but I remember hearing her talk about it.”

“I can,” I confirmed. Really, anyone can, I thought, the hardest part is reading the reply.

“Just ask them if they’re ‘our’ allies or not,” Shahpao instructed. “If they’re amenable to conversation, see if you can figure out how many other colonies are around here, maybe even how many have seen us.” Trying to blink away the remaining tiredness from my eyes because I didn’t want to raise my helmet, I took two more steps up to the ants. They didn’t have the individuals required to make acid balls to attack me with on hand, but three sections of the swarm froze and looked at me. Sitting down close enough to one of their paths that I could reach them, I began the conversation.

[Are you a Rehv allied ant colony?] I wrote out in the dirt. It took a while because the ground kept breaking apart, but once I was done I reached over and scooped up around twenty ants from the nearby path with magic, then placed them into the grooves. Like before, the ants wandered around, and then a piece of their mass broke off to cover the words and “read” them, but they didn’t destroy them like the other colonies had. Instead, they made a few shapes nearby, then dispersed, and the hissing of the main body lowered in volume.

“I don’t know if these ants can read Uwrish,” I said. “The response was a series of ant words.”

“Ant words?” Shahpao asked.

“They have their own language,” I explained. “It’s… it uses abstract pictures to represent ideas. What they said in reply to my question was ‘ant symbol, human symbol, two connected spirals that detach, one circle enveloping another circle, and some kind of very complex moving spiral figure that I can’t describe accurately’.”

“What does it mean?” a female soldier asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “My best guess would be that they’re telling us to leave. It makes sense given the context and their other actions, and it’s reasonable. The symbols could easily be interpreted as something like ‘go away, this is mine’. These ant colonies have intelligence roughly on the same level as a human does, but their sense of self-awareness is different and their motivations are more simplistic, at least from what I’ve seen. If this colony is wild, it probably doesn’t care that we’re here, it just doesn’t want us to hurt it or take its food.”

“Could be lying,” someone suggested.

“As far as I know, they don’t know how to form lies on their own,” I said. “In fact, I’m not sure that they understand the concept of social deception at all. Let me try something.”

I wiped away the words I had written, then drew the symbol for Rehv. Even if the ants didn’t know enough Uwrish to respond properly, they would probably understand the symbol if they had any connection to Rehvite activities. Once again I grabbed a few ants and placed them on the symbol so they could read it. When the main body was finished processing the message, the hissing intensified, and several spots near the pile of corpses formed rapid-fire symbols. I wasn’t afraid, but I heard the soldiers shift and back up.

“That doesn’t sound good,” someone muttered.

“It just repeated the spiral detaching and circle enveloping symbols a few times, along with things I didn’t understand,” I said, standing up. The colony’s three ‘eyes’ watched me closely, and I saw ants massing to make a rush in my direction, but I had no hostile intent. When I stepped away, the insects relaxed, as did the soldiers. “It knows the symbol for Rehv, and it doesn’t like it, as you can see,” I continued. “I don’t think it’s going to give us any trouble, but I also don’t think we can communicate with it.”

“Better than nothing,” Shahpao grimaced. “Everybody pack up, we’re leaving as soon as possible.”

“You know, those shaatgahn rifle bullets are pretty handy,” one of the soldiers said as we were walking the next day, and I nearly tripped and fell on my face. I know I said I wasn’t going to correct them, I thought, but they are really tempting me.

“I bet they’d be great in a pistol rifle like they have in Kahvahrniydah,” the woman he was talking to replied. “You could stuff two or three into the barrel with a double pouch of powder and it would be like shooting a whole ammunition pouch at once.”

“I meant for hunting,” the first soldier replied. “I’ll definitely try that idea next time we stop though, it sounds really smart.” Okay, no, that I can’t allow, I thought, inhaling and speeding up to close in behind them.

“You shouldn’t do that,” I interjected, making the pair jump.

“Uh, why not, ihlzheyv?” the female soldier asked. I noticed that neither of the two were part of the marksmen I had worked with, so I hadn’t interacted with them much before.

“You’ll explode the gun,” I said, “and, for the record, the proper name for the weapons you’re using is musket, not rifle, because the weapons lack a grooved barrel. A shotgun is a different type of weapon entirely, but a musket can function as one in certain circumstances because both typically use smooth barrels. A pistol is, also, generally a single term for a one-handed gun. Pistol rifle would not be considered correct terminology in most cases.”

“Er, okay,” the man stuttered. “How do you… know that?” And now I’m intimidating them by accident, I sighed, I can’t help but think that talking to humans was easier when they assumed I was less dangerous.

“They’re my people’s weapons,” I replied.

“But… Aavspeyjh Zae’ey’yaob-” the man began, trying to pick his words carefully.

“Got the idea from a conversation I had with him, wherein I explained the weapons in detail,” I finished for him. The pair looked stunned, neither of them daring to suspect that I might be lying. “I’m not going to tell you not to use the word ‘rifle’ since it’s already widespread, but please, make Uwrish names for anything new. Hearing all of you mangle English words together is… difficult.”

“Um, we can… do that,” the woman stuttered, and I sighed again.

“Actually, just forget I said anything,” I muttered, “it’s not important.” Slipping another wax pill into my mouth, I walked back to the rear of the caravan again and frowned beneath my helmet. Maybe a few hours of distraction will do me some good, I thought, the boredom is getting to me again.