Ani often wondered if humanity had made a terrible mistake in freeing itself from the Worldrenders. Not that she wanted to go back to captivity. No, she quite liked freedom. But she also thought that liberation had come with costs.

For one thing, it had begun an unfounded belief, the idea that grandiosity equated to success. The logic goes that because their forefathers had incited a massive rebellion against the Worldrenders nearly two centuries ago, one was expected to carry that same spirit of idealism and revolution in daily life. The greater your ambition, the grander your methods, the quicker and more likely you would succeed.

Absurd.

She had been a Hound since she was fifteen and over the last six years, she had met an alarmingly high number of soldiers and other Hounds that thought this way. They spoke of liberating other plantations or even felling a Worldrender as if it was an afterthought, a postscript of a letter that they had finished penning ages ago. Talking to them always left her with the same feeling of nausea and pity.

The team of Hounds that she was with now had no such individuals. The crew had been established three years ago, and while members came and went, they all shared the same motive and philosophy: success is defined by steady profit. They only took hunts with low to medium risks and proportionately high profit. Amateurs would scoff at such an idea, but such hunts did exist. All one had to do was pay attention to the seven Foretoken families.

A few days ago, House Gregoy had served henchhead sheep mutton for their daughter’s engagement ceremony. After that, the other houses began serving it, too. However, the most drastic surge in demand and prices came from the families who were much less affluent but much more prideful. The farmers and merchants were inundated with orders, and the only way to secure the sheep was to contract Hounds to steal them from a plantation.

Ani’s team of twelve specialized in chasing fads and trends and they felt no shame in it. It wasn’t anything grand or ambitious, but it was steady, steady profit. Sometimes, the risks would be higher, like when youths from House Hemli started wearing slippers made from the skin of the extremely aggressive red-tinted piranhas, but this was rarely the case.

Henchhead sheep, thankfully, weren’t hard to find. They were bred in the Veant plantation, which was a few days away. The plan was to stay for three nights. Each night, four of them would watch for Veant guards, and the remaining eight would nab sheep from the farm pens and transport them to the wagon in the neighboring forest.

The first two nights went well, and Ani was on watch for the third night. She and the other three Hounds perched on trees outside the farm, watching for guards. Once it was safe, they’d light a small flame to signal the other Hounds to run for the forest.

Ani felt a bead of worry as she looked through her cylindrical fox-eye. A pair of Veant guards wearing leather body armor wasn’t moving from the eastern side of the farm. The farms bordered the plantation, so the only way to reach the forest was to cut straight across at least a few hundred acres of fields and fences.

She squeezed the fox-eye harder but couldn’t make out what the guards were doing. Were the Veants talking? Were they even capable of intelligent speech?

She tried to reassure herself. It was unlikely that they had been detected. The sheep were only counted weekly, and the Hounds changed farms each night. Even if the Veants noticed missing sheep, they wouldn’t know which farm would be targeted next.

“I’ve been thinking,” Harald said, breaking the silence. The barrel-chested man wasn’t even using his fox-eye. He had a block of wood in his right hand and he was chiseling it with a knife.

“We hate when you do that,” Miriam muttered.

“Don’t be so mean,” Ani said with a laugh. She put her fox-eye down, relieved to find a way to distract herself from her anxiety. “We could do with some levity. I love you, Miriam, but you and Gallus are my least favorite people to be on watch duty with.”

Gallus said nothing, his fox-eye pointed at the pair of guards. Despite what she said, Ani was relieved to have him. He was around her age, perhaps a year or two older, and wore his dark hair in a ponytail as she did. They had worked together for more than a year and she thought of him as their crew’s owl, so quiet and observant. It was only because she trusted him so much that she felt comfortable taking a short break.

Miriam must’ve felt the same because she put down her fox-eye and twisted a braid of her hair around her finger. “Alright, humor us, Harald.”

“Not if you say it like that,” he said sulkily. It was hard to believe that the large man was the oldest in the group. An older Hound could either be a boon or a bane – he had survived for so long either because he was a seasoned warrior or a seasoned coward. It’d been five months since he joined and she still couldn’t decide which camp Harald belonged to.

“Aw c’mon, tell us,” Ani said sweetly. Take my mind off things, please.

“Well, okay,” he said slowly. “It’s about those things. Y’know.”

“No, we have no idea what you’re talking about,” the older woman said exasperatedly.

“Keep going,” Ani said.

“T-the Worldrenders,” he stammered out. “Magnus was talking about them the other day at the pub.”

Ani resisted the urge to roll her eyes but Miriam didn’t. “Magnus is a fool if he thinks he can even breathe in their direction,” she said with disdain. “I hope you’re not suggesting anything similar.”

“Yeah, no, yeah, I’m not,” he said quickly. “It’s sorta the opposite. The thing is, I’ve always wondered, right? Are they – no, can those things actually die?”

The forest became silent, and Harald seemed to delight in the effect he’d created.

Ani had read about the debates surrounding the lifespans of Worldrenders. They seemed to age, but it was never confirmed if they could actually die naturally. It was an intriguing question, but her lips curled into a frown.

“As you say, Miriam, no one can even really breathe in their direction,” he continued. “People say Agapios and his band were strong enough to take one on, but that was almost a century ago. No one’s heard from th–”

“Everyone knows about this stuff,” Ani interrupted. “Is there anything else worth saying about it?”

Harald closed his mouth, looking chastised, and she realized how sharp her tone had been. Miriam looked at her with a raised eyebrow. But Ani didn’t apologize or explain. Harald’s questions highlighted why she hated discussing the Worldrenders – there were no definitive answers.

It was nothing but conjecture and an endless line of pedants arguing with each other. An exhausting subject and, even worse, a trite one. Reading and talking about those ancient monsters was nothing like actually encountering one.

“Trouble,” Gallus announced.

“What?” Harald’s voice became a whisper.

They all held up their fox-eyes. What she saw made her let out a small gasp, and she accidentally tightened her grip on the fox-eye, giving her a closer look at the eight Veant guards spread around the eastern side of the farm. There were eight more coming to the west side.

“They’re being surrounded,” Miriam said. “How did the Veants know? Don’t tell me those fools…”

“They must’ve attacked one,” Harald said.

Ani bit her lip. “No, they know better than that.”

The Veants were a race of gray humanoids with bulbous eyes and six arms. It was often said that they were so dull-witted that they could only use four arms at a time, the other two remaining limp at their sides.

Despite their low intelligence, there were two reasons that Worldrenders used Veants as guards in other plantations. One was their sheer number; they bred easily and quickly. In this single settlement, there were easily tens of thousands of them living in towering stone spires.

The second reason was that Veant blood, while odorless to most races including humans, was pungent to their own kind. They could pick up the scent from at least half a mile away. Wounding one Veant was equivalent to sending the whole swarm into a frenzy.

Or, much worse, they’d alert the Worldrender.

“No, that doesn’t seem to be the case,” Gallus said. “There’d be more of an uproar. This is too structured for Veants. Someone must’ve known we were coming.”

Miriam let out a bitter laugh. “We’re stealing sheep for fuck’s sake. Someone’s organized an advanced military stratagem to catch some damn sheep thieves.”

Ani pulled her gallinger flail out from her robes. “I’m going to signal them. They need to leave now. Before more come.”

“What if the Veants see us?” Harald whimpered.

“Doesn’t matter. They’re going to be trapped if they don’t –”

“Looks like they were thinking the same thing,” Gallus said, peering intently with his fox-eye.

She held up hers and saw five figures running through the crop fields. Three missing. They were too far for her to make out their faces. The Veants brandished their four swords and rushed towards the Hounds.

Miriam swore under her breath and pulled out her flail. “I’m going to help.”

“They should be able to break through them,” Gallus said with conviction. “Veants can use four arms but not well.”

Rather than reassurance, Gallus’ words stoked a fear in her. He was right. Eight of them should’ve been able to fend off some Veants. So what had happened to the other three?

The remaining Hounds were halfway across the field, close enough for her to recognize each member. Close enough for her to notice how they fought with reckless abandon. Close enough for her to see the expression on their faces.

Abject terror.

Something came running out of the barn that the Hounds had fled from. It moved strangely, bursting at an inhuman speed before slowing down and then bursting forward again. And as it got closer to the Hounds, she realized two things.

One, it wasn’t running. Instead, it seemed like it was making incredibly fast and far leaps despite its feet never touching the ground.

And two, it was a man. In between leaps, he made for a surreal image – his left hand seemed to grasp at the air above him as if he could steal the stars from the night sky with just a little more effort before it pulled back in defeat.

It was then that she noticed that he was holding something tall and slender in his right hand. It was hard to make out – he was moving so quickly – but the tip of it seemed to shimmer in the moonlight.

And then it buried itself into the right shoulder of one of the Hounds, a man named Hammond, and the pursuing man reached forward with his left hand, the one that had reached toward the sky, and with a downward flick of his wrist that seemed almost lazy, the world bent around his fingers and cleaved Hammond in two, and as the Hound let out a bloodcurdling scream, Ani pulled the fox-eye away from her, almost screaming herself because all the beauty had disappeared from the world the moment she realized that the man trying to steal the stars was wielding a halberd in his right hand and the power of the Worldrenders in his left.