I immediately focused my attention on the group of villagers that had just left the village and who looked ready for trouble. Of them, there were around thirty, and composed of men and occasionally women from the village. Many of them, I’d previously seen that morning gathered around the Macklinte residence, and leading the crowd was Larkin: The Headman.

As for what they were carrying—well they weren’t anything that I would’ve described as “weapons”. Lengths of wood, farming implements, and an occasional burning torch to light the way in the rapidly fading sunlight were all they had. I wasn’t worried, but then again, I always carried everything I owned on me and I had my neurostunner to hand. I was worried about Dakla.

Over the course of the day, we’d tried to pack all of her “essentials”, but as it turned out, she was surprisingly bad at prioritizing. Every other plant, jar, or book was “essential” and something that she wouldn’t be able to leave without. After the first pass, the mountain of satchels, bags, and baskets that she’d stacked on and around the dining table out-massed and out-volumed her by a considerable margin.

Dakla had taken one look at the pile and sighed deeply. Clearly, packing up everything she owned was difficult for her. I offered to help sort, and together we went through the whole assortment and reduced it by half again. It was still too much, so I came up with a solution—or at least a patch. Her cellar was quite hidden, and she could simply hide that which she couldn’t carry underground to return for it later.

By this time, it was afternoon, and we’d sequestered everything that she couldn’t carry on her back and wanted to avoid losing down underground. Then, it was time to wait and see what would happen. During this time Dakla was nervous, and I tried to distract her by getting her to teach me to read. Both efforts, distraction and learning to read, were moderately successful, and by the time evening came, I’d made a good start on becoming literate and Dakla had been successfully distracted from incessantly running through possible confrontations all afternoon.

Done with our lesson, Dakla outlined what she hoped would happen: Best would be if the Headman visited and complained some more. That would mean that those she’d helped in the past talked some sense into him and the other hotheads of the village. Worst case, well, I was looking at it: an armed mob.

It was time to leave. Our escape path was clear, and I found it very unlikely that the mob knew that we knew that they were coming. If we leave now, we’ll be long gone before the mob even arrives.

I said, “Dakla, we should get going. There’s a mob approaching from the village. If we leave towards the southwest, we won’t cross anyone’s path; the way is clear.”

Then, Dakla, who I’d categorized with at least some sort of common sense made a completely nonsensical decision:

“I’m going to try to talk to them, wait here” she said.

“What?!” I was incredulous. Hadn’t she just heard what I’d said?

I reiterated, “Dakla, they are armed and angry. You can talk to them another day.”

Dakla sighed, but remained resolute in her idiotic idea, “Look Elise, I know these people. I will talk to them, and I’ll sort this whole trouble out. You can just stay here, and I’ll go resolve this.”

I couldn’t believe what was happening. We’d prepared to leave and had been packing all day, and now Dakla didn’t want to go? Does she not see the danger? Still, I might be in the wrong here: I knew that I didn’t have much to base my behavioral extrapolations on. I didn’t know these villagers like Dakla did. But, just in case, I palmed my neurostunner and slunk out into the night after Dakla when she went to go meet with the mob.

The night was calm, with low windspeeds, but full of local wildlife noises. Bugs skittered and chirped, grasses whispered, and in the distance, I could hear the mutterings of the mob and the occasional creak of leather boots. Dakla, ahead of me and with a small lantern, didn’t know I’d followed her, nor did she know about the drone I’d colored sky-black and positioned 50 meters or so above her. I had an excellent tactical view.

Quickly running the calculus on where the two groups would meet, I scoped out the area: In approximately two minutes, they’d meet on an unremarkable patch of footpath. The surroundings there were rather open, with only three trees in the vicinity and grasses reaching up to my knees. Fortunately, this encounter spot was also in a bit of a ditch. With my map of the area and the drone’s telescopic optics, it was easy to find the ideal hiding spot: Next to one of the trees. I’d be able to look but not be seen with relative ease and in relative proximity.

Now, I only have to get there. This wasn’t too difficult. Unlike trying to sneak past a visual observer during the day, slinking around in the relative darkness was something that I could do with casual mastery—compared to the locals at least. Primarily, I didn’t need any light to see and secondarily, a combination of sneak-suit and active noise cancellation would render me almost completely silent. With the soles of my skinsuit’s shoes sprouting uncountable numbers of fibers, the crunching of even the driest foliage could be muffled beyond what the mob or Dakla could possibly notice among the other night-sounds. I jogged off into the darkness to my overwatch position.

Once there, I hunkered down, crouched behind the tree, and watched the two groups approach. They’d clearly noticed each other. Dakla, for one, had slowed down a tiny bit. Maybe she’s realizing how bad of an idea this is. The mob didn’t slow though. They only grew quiet. Eventually the two groups stopped with around four meters between them. Dakla held her lantern up, and silence reigned. I used this time to check my neurostunner: Set to stun.

How well it would actually work was something that I was still unsure about: It would work but I wasn’t sure how fast it would do so. Basically, the neurostunner was nothing more than a compact phased-array emitter which could induce tiny electrical currents at a distance. Locked onto the nervous system of a living creature, it would cause all sorts of problems for them: At the lowest power levels, victims would experience slight confusion or disorientation. At the highest levels, it could disturb autonomic processes like heartbeats or breathing—which was a bit dangerous. I had mine set to a middling setting: it wouldn’t knock anyone out but second or two of sustained scrambling should be debilitating to standard humans.

The terrain and my sight lines for using the neurostunner were also perfect. With my drone’s additional viewpoint, I had sub-millimeter tracking on all the people in the gully. If it came down to it, I’d be able to knock people out of the fight or delay any possible pursuit at a rate of 0.5 mob-members per second.

Then, the waiting between the two parties stopped. Larkin stepped forwards.

“Witch” he spat, and even the insects in the surroundings seemed to grow quieter at his proclamation.

“I’m no witch. What is your proof, why do you accuse me so?” Dakla said, attempting to maintain a calm air.

“Proof?!” Larkin said this as if it was bad joke and looked to the other villagers as if to reassure himself that they were still there, “Two of our people die within a Span and for no good reason after you ‘help’ them? That seems awfully unlikely.”

Dakla rebutted, “Death is part of the Cycle, you all should be well aware. Those men died because they were beyond my ability to help.”

“Then why did they die, witch? Tell them what you told me.” Larkin said as he gestured to the mob behind him. Oh no.

“I believe they were poisoned.”

At this, a wave of murmurs passed through the crowd. Apparently, this had been one tidbit of information that the Headman hadn’t shared with his constituents. Larkin turned around, not quite facing away from Dakla, but now clearly addressing the villagers:

“See, even the witch herself admits it: She’s poisoned them!”

“That’s not what—” Dakla’s defense was drowned in the shouts from the mob and the loud-voiced Headman.

“The witch poisoned Markus! The witch poisoned Mr. Macklinte!”

The crowd was getting riled up, but only around half was onboard. I felt somewhat relieved; maybe Dakla was right about the general village sentiment after all. Aside from the instigators—notably the headman—I began to suspect that most of the mob were just gawkers who’d been swept along by the heightened emotions, mainly curious to see what would happen and holding a pitchfork more as a social statement and less as a threat.

The Headman saw this general apathy too and decided to seize the initiative himself. He stepped forwards, gesturing to two other men in the crowd, and my power consumption spiked as time appeared to slow to a crawl.

I’d slipped into combat-time, and at the price of a quicker draining power cell, I’d be able to perceive and make decisions on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis. Why? I scanned through my subroutines until I found the culprit: A riot-control subroutine had been constantly making threat assessments and when Larkin stepped forwards, the metric for “likelihood of imminent violent/unfavorable altercation” had tripped past the 50/50 margin and alerted my main thread of consciousness.

Reanalyzing the situation now, I skeptical of my subroutine. Larkin had kept both his hands free to gesticulate and aid in his rhetoric and was unarmed. Furthermore, he didn’t have the full support of the crowd behind him yet for whatever he wanted to do: Only two larger men bearing coils of rope had stepped towards Dakla after him. Are they going to try to capture her? Probably. Then, I had to decide: Do I intervene?

The reasons to do so were obvious: I’d consider Dakla an acquaintance or even a friend and she’d helped me out a great deal since my arrival here. What would happen to her if she were successfully captured? Looking through my historical archives, I mentally grimaced at grim examples which I found: would they hold some sort of witch-trial? Do they have witch-hunters? Dakla hadn’t really elaborated on the fate of those caught practicing magic illicitly, but from her word choice and my inference, I guessed it wasn’t a pleasant fate.

The reasons not to intervene were more complex. I couldn’t honestly say that I knew enough about these people to accurately predict their actions further than a couple fractions of a second into the future. After all, when I’d seen the mob approach, I’d immediately assumed they had a direct and violent intent. Now? They seemed more unsure than anything, and my behavioral model of them drifted further away from the standardized one which was feeding most of my subroutines. Only the headman and around one third of the crowd were agitating for something to happen.

The two men bearing ropes were starting to fan out to the sides. I had a limited window to act—if I wanted to do so. I considered. A single shot from my neurostunner wouldn’t cause any permanent damage and might dissuade or distract those with hostile intent from further acting it out. Also, this course of action was supported by the many tactical and combat subroutines twirling away in my mind. Notably, a program focused on personal protection—bodyguard duties essentially—was positively frothing at the mouth about how preventing kidnappings in the first place was vastly preferable to eventual hostage negotiation or extraction missions. With each slow-motion step, the tactical situation became clearer. The Principal’s well-being is in jeopardy.

Mentally, I locked the targeting reticule of the Neurostunner on the extrapolated location of Larkin’s basal ganglia. Then, without hesitation, I fired the neurostunner.

For a moment, nothing appeared to be happening. In slow motion, Larkin’s foot hit the dusty path and his leather boot threw up a small cloud of dust. Then, the main lobe of the neurostunner’s projected beam began to work its effect: scrambling Larkin’s capability of coordinating movement.

It was, in my opinion, a bit comical. One moment, the Headman had been at everyone’s center of attention. A leader; confident, flanked by his supporters. Exuding authority, he’d stepped into the divide between the group, and surefootedly, he’d made it halfway. Then, it seemed as if he’d forgotten how to walk. His foot hit the ground, but his knee didn’t seem willing to support his weight and simply folded downwards. Pitching forwards, Larkin probably tried to break his fall with his arms, but they, like his legs, weren’t properly following the instructions his brain sent them: his right arm tucked in and his left arm flailed outwards.

Once he was down, I released the trigger. Everyone had fallen silent, and the Headman broke the stillness by groaning. He’d hit his head during the fall. Shakily he picked himself up, limbs still occasionally spasming from the aftershocks. Then, he turned around to face Dakla, raised an accusatory finger, and growled, “Witch.”

Dakla’s eyes were wide, and I knew at that moment that I’d messed up. I made the wrong choice; I’d let the instincts of the moment sweep me away. Dakla, sensibly, turned around and began to run.