“So much for boring, eh Meirgold,” Alecia said dryly. She stood leaned against a half-rotten fence post at the edge of the road leading out of Hakarth, arms crossed and dark eyes trained up the steep path leading into the south pass. Her coal-black hair was short, so she had done little more than tuck it behind her ears with silver barrettes. Alecia’s attire had changed from fashionable to rugged seemingly overnight, as she had donned a cuirass and thick work pants dyed in the wine-red of the Radvik guild. An array of brushes and a satchel of paper cards had been joined at her hip by a series of bladed tools and a prominent stiletto.

Merigold and Garret were similarly attired, though what on Garret looked ordinary on Merigold looked uncomfortable. The guild had no armor small enough for her narrow frame and thin arms, and her belt was conspicuously empty of weapons. She carried only one – a thick staff with a dull spear tip that could serve as either a bludgeoning weapon or an instrument for drawing the complicated spell circles required for animating a corpse. Like Alecia, she carried ink and two small brushes, which she was more likely to actually use.

The three of them were accompanied by four other members of the Radvik guild, two Apprentices, and two Senior members. The Apprentices were Adarak and Nihil, of whom one was short and nearly as thin as her, gifted with elemental control over electricity, and the other with loose curls of the same coloring as Alecia’s and the ability to manipulate fire. One of the Seniors was a healer, Derek, with eyes like peridot and a warm calm reminiscent of Garret. The last Senior member was the leader of their unit, a psychic who specialized in defensive barriers and carried a well-oiled rapier. Her name as Ilf.

Ilf had already warned Merigold, Alecia, and Garret that they were expected to keep up with the unit, but should hang back in the case that they came across anything combative in the mountain pass. They would be taking only a day trip out to the tiny village of Yifeld five miles up the road, and then returning; a simple and routine inspection of the route that was unlikely to yield anything terribly interesting. It was just after dawn at the moment – a faint blush still crept across the bright skies, gilding clouds the color of the lavender fields north of the city – and they planned to return well before nightfall.

“Move out,” Ilf called abruptly, breaking Merigold from her inspection of the loose leather straps around her forearms. Alecia pushed off the fence post to start after their Seniors, and Merigold trailed after her with Garret, contemplating the yellowing scrub and thorny bushes that were all that grew at their current elevation.

The better part of an hour rolled past as they hiked ever higher into the mountains, watching the pale skies grow more saturated with color. The clouds thinned as the day warmed, revealed in patches between the reddish stone that soared to either side of them. Craggy nooks hid snakes and lizards that peered down at them as they passed, some the size of a small child. By the way the Apprentices eyed them, she assumed a part of their inspection occasionally demanded driving such creatures away from the road. Their pace was grueling, and Merigold found herself breathing heavily and sweating under her oversized cuirass long before Ilf called a halt at a fork in the road. She glanced back, waving over Derek, who came and stood next to her as she crouched low to peer at the stone.

Merigold pressed a little closer as Ilf rocked back on her heels and squinted to the right of the fork, which sloped steeply upward. What lay in that direction was no great mystery; the scree fields of Hakarth, bordered by old magma flows pockmarked with caves where a great deal of the mountain’s native fauna lived out the heat of the day. From more recent experience, Merigold also knew that the route led to two mines, neither of which she was eager to go near.

“Traces of a scuffle of some kind,” Ilf said, straightening. “And blood, not too old.” Merigold paled, following Ilf’s gaze up the road. “We’ll check it out, and report what we find back to the guild.”

Ilf motioned forward, clearly expecting that she would be followed. She was, of course. Even by Merigold, who was silently hoping they would not see more blood.

They were perhaps a hundred yards from cresting the slope leading up to the scree fields when she heard whistling. It was abrupt, and brief, following by a snapping sound and an agonized shout. Merigold stumbled as she almost ran into Garret, who had leapt back suddenly. Over his meaty shoulder, she could see Adarak on the ground, clutching his leg. There was a crossbow bolt through it. He was screaming through clenched teeth as Derek fell to his knees beside him. It might have been because of the blood seeping through is clothes making, which brought a cold sweat to Merigold’s forehead, or because of his screaming that she did not immediately realize that Ilf was shouting commands. One stood out to her.

“No cover. Remain within ten yards of me. Nihil, find them now!”

Ten yards – that was the standard area of affect for a shield generated by a psychic. Merigold shrieked when something slammed into a seemingly solid wall in the air above her and bounced off. It was another crossbow bolt, rolling away across the rocks.

In front of her, Garret was holding up one hand, and three spikes of solid ice hovered above it. Unless Ilf dropped the barrier, he could not throw them, but he was ready. Nihil was standing very still, eyes closed. She found herself looking around wildly for Alecia, but her friend was simply sitting on the earth, carefully but rapidly tracing complex symbols on a few cards from her satchel.

How Alecia could be so calm in such a moment was beyond Merigold’s understanding. Even Nihil was sweating, his forehead damp despite the dust in the mountain air. She could see by the pallor of Garret’s face that he could not fool himself into feeling prepared for what was to come.

“I’m calling for reinforcements now! “Ilf shouted at the surrounding mountains. “I can hold this barrier all day, so if I were you, I’d scuttle off to wherever you came from!”

There was some sort of answering shout from over their heads. It sounded like cursing. Then there was more of it, shouting that echoed from ahead of them as three people slid into view, silhouetted by the gleam of the sun on the scree in the distance.

“Four total!” Nihil shouted, eyes popping open. They looked like they would burst from his head. “One above, six, well…” he trailed off, staring at the people that charged into view. Two were carrying maces. One, Merigold guessed by Ilf’s groan, was a psychic.

There were only two ways to bring down the barrier of a psychic – do enough damage in a short enough timeframe, or bring another psychic onto the field to tear it down. The latter seemed to be happening in that moment.

“We don’t know what they can do,” Ilf managed, “be ready!”

She made some motion at them, which Merigold did not think Garret or Alecia recognized, either. The others did. Derek stood sharply, pulling Adarak to his feet. Nihil slapped his hands together and released a bolt of lightning that slammed into the chest of one of the charging mace-wielders.

Apparently, the barrier was down.

The other mace-wielder threw down his weapon and hurled a ball of fire towards Ilf. Thereafter, chaos broke out. Merigold found herself on the ground, shaking, as Garret hurled shards of ice in the direction of the marauders that had charged them. Adarak joined him, and soon the road was thick with steam and dust and dirt, ringing with the din of battle and the screams of…Merigold had no idea who. Everyone seemed to be screaming or shouting something. There were rocks pelting them from overhead, which Ilf was deflecting as best she could.

Panicked, Merigold cast around for something to defend herself with. And that was when she felt it…death. Through her long studies, she had always read that magic came instinctually to those in which it had been Awakened. Until that moment, it had never occurred to her what that meant. She could tell that something dead was nearby. She could also tell it was not a recent death. A day, maybe. Two.

Despite the panic that gripped her, she felt herself honing in on the sensation.

Where?

She scrambled across the rocky earth, looking up wildly a few times to see if anyone was charging at her. No one was. They were distracted by ice shards and fireballs and the rocks raining down from the sky to ricochet off thin air.

Merigold’s hands were trembling when she found a rock the size of her head, grabbed it, and leaned back as hard as she could. It did not budge. She strained, and suddenly felt someone there beside her, pulling with her. Alecia. The rock rolled out of the way just enough for her to see the tiny, decaying body beneath it.

A salamander.

A venomous, two-tail striped salamander.

Pinching it between her fingers, she fumbled with her satchel, pulling out her vial of ink and a brush. More complicated creatures, like humans, required very complex circles to be ‘raised’ properly. The simpler the creature, and the less it needed to do, the simpler the circle.

“Take this, for focus. I’ll cover you,” Alecia said, pushing a card into Merigold’s lap. There was no opportunity for gratitude. Alecia had already turned away, whipping out another card. When she held it up and flicked a finger against it, a peal like thunder shook the very earth beneath their feet. Everyone not locked immediately in battle looked skyward, sure that the mountain would come roaring down over their head at any moment.

At any other time, Merigold might have laughed – clearly, Alecia had used nothing more than a simple noise-amplification rune. But now, she drew, and she drew with precision – the same precision she had practiced on a thousand Drafter contracts that she would never get to use. She inked her terms simply, but without hesitation. And then she dropped her brush and ink and waved her hand over the salamander, which stood up immediately, looked at her, and then turned and hurtled towards the cloud of steam and dust and fire that was battle.

Being a corpse, the salamander could not produce any more venom, but what remained in its venom glands should be enough to kill a man, or two. The two-tail striped salamander, which the people of Hakarth called the Guile Salamander, was as notoriously shy as it was deadly. It had only bitten three people in the past five years…but of the one that survived, he had declared there was no bite more painful in the world.

She could hardly believe her luck.

It took all of her concentration to keep the little salamander on track, but she knew when it shot up the leg of the psychic marauder, who had hung back to deflect ice, fire, and lightning from his companions. She heard his scream at the same time Nihil roared with success, and a marauder went flying into the stone wall behind them.

Ilf shouted more orders. There was more chaos. Someone fell from far overhead, hitting the rocks with a sound that should have brought Merigold to her kenes. She was too focused on her little salamander to notice, trying to nudge it towards another of the marauders. It was nearly roasted by a blast of fire, from whom she did not know. A rock landed on it, flattening its already crooked spine, and rolled away. She was so focused she hardly noticed that the tide had turned in their favor, and the battle was nearly over. She leapt up with a triumphant shout when her salamander latched onto a stranger with a ball of fire in his fist, and the flames were extinguished in a puff of smoke. He roared with pain, ripping the salamander off of his arm so forcefully it’s head was nearly dislodged from its body.

Alecia looked at Merigold like she had lost her mind, and then looked back at the stranger, as if only just realizing what must have happened. While Nihil dealt with the fire-throwing stranger – with a sharp strike of the butt of a dangerous-looking dagger against the side of his head – Ilf knelt and picked up the now very still and rather stiff salamander by the tail. She twisted it forward and back, and then looked in Merigold’s direction.

“You surprise me, necromancer,” she said, tossing the salamander away with a look of disgust. “That was lucky, and damn fast.” Merigold stood rooted to the spot, swaying slightly. She adjusted the too-large leather sleeves around her wrists, straightening them.

“Your welcome,” Alecia came closer to say. “I’ll have to make you a bucket of those focus cards. I thought it was supposed to take ages for a necromancer to raise something.”

“I could use a few, myself,” Garret said, shuffling closer. He was holding his own arm, which by its bruised and battered appearance, had been hit by one of the stones raining down from above.

“Simple creatures can be raised quickly,” Merigold said carefully, kneeling to pick up the ink, which had tipped over when she threw it on the ground, and her single brush. Then she stood and dusted off her oversized cuirass. Not far away, Adarak was being hefted to his feet by Derek and Nihil. They would remove the crossbow bolt only once they had safely returned to Hakarth.

“Reinforcements will be here in minutes,” Nihil stated, looking from Ilf to the relatively uninjured Interns. “Looks like we’re all alive.”

“Damn straight,” Ilf said, peering down at the still man in front of her. “Get over here, necromancer, and tell me which of these thugs is dead.”

Merigold glanced at Garret and Alecia, sniffed with concern, and went to Ilf’s side. She peered down at the man in front of her, who had a stiletto protruding from his kidney. Blood pooled beneath him, thick was syrup.

For half a minute, she as sure she was going to spew the contents of her breakfast all over the corpse, because surely that was what it was.

And then she fainted.