“So, the commander needs the swords?”

“Yeah, he found a merchant’s carriage to ambush and he wanted me to grab you and the spares for the operation. It’s due at the highway ambush point in about an hour and a half. How did the foraging go by the way?”

“No luck, I had to run from some land dragons...”

“Fuck… those things again?”

“They would have caught me too if it weren’t for a shelled orda they found. Sigh… Right now, I’m tired as shit but I should be good to go in an hour and a half.”

Shaula could hear two voices some distance away from the two of them, walking down some stairs.

“Shaula? What’s up?”

“The people who live here are coming this way...”

“What!?”

“Shh!!”

Shaula can hear the footsteps walking closer with no sign that they had been heard just now. She had already heard the clammer of metal.

That must have been the other entrance gate to this place. I wonder if they opened it with magic… wait, now’s not the time! We need to move!

“Whoa!”

Shaula pulls Ajax out of the room back to the melted entrance, leaving the glass jars and the swords behind. She dashes outside the cave with him and stops on the floor of the cliff.

“So, they’re back already?”

“Yeah. I heard two of them. It sounds like there might be more of them somewhere else”

“Should we get going before they find us? I already have these clothes.”

“...No. I think we should listen to what they’re saying. I heard a little something already.”

Shaula had heard their conversation. Their talk about an ambush on a merchant’s carriage.

Shaula surmises that if there is a merchant carriage travelling on a highway, there should be a path to a village or a town that they could follow.

“You listen too. Just so I don’t miss anything. You can enhance your hearing, right?”

“Yeah, I think so. Let me try… alright, I think I can hear them now.”

Ajax directs strength to his sense of hearing and picks up on their conversation. Both Ajax and Shaula listen intently.

“So this time, we’re just going to kill the merchant, alright?”

“That’s what the commander said? We’re not gonna ransom him or anything?”

“No, after last time, the commander wants us to get out of that game. But this guy is definitely loaded. If the peddler’s travelling with a wife, we kill her too and if there are any kids we’ll leave them with the guards or take them with us and drop them off somewhere.”

“So, we’re leaving the guards alive?”

“...It’ll probably depend on how much they piss us off. Commander says to leave them alone if they behave after we knock them out.”

Ajax doesn’t like what he’s hearing. These two men are planning the murder of an innocent man and his family. Ajax feels anger slowly leak from his mind. Thoughts of violence fill his consciousness.

The air chills.

Then the thought of what he has already done to Creta and Kinser surfaces. Can Ajax really handle killing others as he did before?

All he knows now is...

“Shaula, we need to stop them.”

“There are only two of these guys. There’s another group with weapons preparing somewhere else for the ambush. We don’t even know where they might be.”

Shaula hears one of the two men pick up the seven short swords and hand three to his comrade. They continue speaking.

“What’ll we do with the Miellas? Leave them for the guards?”

“No fucking way. We take those for ourselves. We’re not running a charity here. They can walk a few hours and reach the town.”

Shaula has heard something very interesting. The existence of a nearby town. If it takes normal people a few hours to walk there, Ajax and Shaula should be able to reach it in no time at all.

“The roads aren’t that safe, you know… Especially without the carriage, how’re they going to defend against land dragons?”

“They’re bodyguards, it’s not like a Miella would help them fight...whatever, they’ll get through it.”

A Miella is a six-legged, furry carriage animal; a docile, friendly, domesticated creature. Shaula and Ajax understand that much with the preprogrammed language information they have.

“Ajax. I think we should follow them. We can find out where they’re hiding to ambush their entire group and deal with them there.”

“...Ok. So, we knock them out and capture them?”

“We should wait until they actually attack the carriage. That way the merchant or whoever can speak on our behalf about how these guys are criminals when we turn them in.”

Ajax’s intentions are the protection of innocent people from a group of murderers. Shaula also wishes for that but she knows that the path to people will be on the highway that these bandits will be ambushing.

In the worst-case scenario, they’ll be given directions to the road and reach a town from there. In the best-case scenario, they’ll get in good with a rich merchant.

At a minimum, they can grab the non-spare swords from the captured bandits and trade them in for a bounty or something.

In a minute, the two bandits leave the room. They do not notice the rearrangement of the glass jars and the spare swords or the missing shirt and pants that Ajax is currently wearing.

“We’ll keep the shell here for now. We’ll be able to find it again after we get the location of the highway.”

Shaula makes this suggestion to Ajax.

“You sure you’ll remember where this place is?”

“No problem. I’m good at recalling directions and I already have the scent of the shell memorized. I think I can track it down from anywhere.”

“So... you’re a bloodhound now?”

“I’m a lot of new things now. Remember to keep your ears open for their movements, ok? If we’re going to track them without giving ourselves away, we’re going to need to tail them some distance back.”

“Ok. Got it.”

Shaula hears the metal resound as the two bandits leave the cave. Ajax and she wait until the bandits are a distance away from the entrance.

Then, Shaula and Ajax trek up an in-cave staircase until they find the second entrance. The metal entrance is closed up, sealed through some kind of magic like Ajax had guessed earlier.

Shaula melts the metal bars of the entrance as quietly as possible. Both of them can still hear the sounds of the two bandits walking on the dirt ground, holding multiple short swords.

Ajax and Shaula examine the plain before them. The bandits have walked past a ridge up ahead so they are currently not in sight. There are some bushes in the area with branches growing needle leaves.

Ajax can see a tree some distance to his right.

“How far back should we keep?”

Ajax whispers to Shaula about their tailing distance.

“Just so long as they can’t see us. About a kilometre should be enough.”

“A whole kilometre? You sure we won’t lose them?”

“Yeah, my hearing is good enough for that distance. I can still hear the sound of their walking.”

Ajax and Shaula walk up to the ridge. The ground ahead is filled with bushes and trees every so often. It reminds Ajax a little of an African savannah.

There is much less wild grass in the area ahead than where they walked before. There are enough trees to hide their presence behind so even in an open flatter area like this, they have plenty of hiding spots.

Ajax and Shaula can see the bandits in the distance. They’re running to reunite with their comrades, not looking behind them. This area doesn’t have a lot of animals or predators.

The features of the two bandits cannot be seen clearly outside of the fact that they’re wearing light armour and helmets.

Ajax and Shaula tail the bandits as the two bandits sprint their way forward.

Some time passes.

Eventually, the bandits reach their comrades who are waiting about seven kilometres away.

Shaula can see that the other bandits are also likely men and covered in light armour with helmets. There are seven bandits in total now.

Their faces cannot be seen. However, each of them is holding their own short sword.

Currently, Ajax and Shaula are a kilometre away from the bandits, on high ground with a clear vantage to the bandit group below them.

“Hey, that’s the road there!”

Ajax notices a highway a few hundred metres past the bandits, who waiting in ambush behind a series of tall bushes. It is paved with grey bricks.

Shaula notices something else. It looks like the two bandits made it back to their companions just in the nick of time. The bandits start running around the bushes towards the road.

The carriage has already arrived.

“Alright, let’s go help them! But, Shaula.”

“Huh?”

“Now that they’ve arrived, just… if you can help it, don’t kill them. We should be strong enough to knock them off their feet without killing them, right?”

“Yeah... I think we can do that.”

Ajax and Shaula bolt from where they are. They should reach the bandits in one minute.

The large carriage, being pulled by two Miella directed by a carriage driver, stops at the sight of the seven bandits holding unsheathed swords.

One of the bandits shouts at the carriage driver.

“Tell your boss to get out here!”

The carriage doesn’t move for a few seconds. The carriage driver, slightly fearful of the bandits, opens a small window into the carriage and converses with the carriage passengers.

Four men come out of the carriage, wearing bronze armour, holding glaves. The merchant’s bodyguards.

One of the bandits speaks to his comrades. The commander.

“Alright, men… do this for your fathers and mothers, your dead brothers and sisters, your enslaved ancestors. This merchant here is like those slavers who terrorized our kind for our entire lives. They don’t deserve to live on the fruits of our bondage. They don’t deserve to live at all!”

“Yes, sir!”

The bandits raised their swords in preparation for battle. The commander raises his own sword, a transparent blade, which radiates bright, blue light.

The fight begins--

Boom.

A large sound comes from a direction to the side of their confrontation.

The bodyguards look to the left. The bandits look in that same direction, the origin of the impact. A cloud of dust dissipates.

A man in somewhat familiar clothes holding hands with a woman as beautiful as the sun, moon and stars.

Both of them wearing smiles on their way to bring justice to the evildoers.