Balletaria watched in horrified fascination as Shaitaan danced among the goblins, her limbs outstretched in graceful arches and that strange sword aflame with the light of the setting sun. She’d witnessed her open the biggest of the creatures like a roast chicken, smiling, laughing all the while as though the pitched battle were nothing more than the most decadent party among friends.


    The goblins, for all their ferocity, for all their otherworldly savagery, were no match for her graceful cruelty. They were torn apart, their limbs severed, their bodies broken beyond healing. Each thrust of their spears, each slash of their knives, each snap of their jaws was repaid a hundredfold. Her fist smashed jaws, her feet shattered limbs, and her sword—if one could call it that, for it seemed to Balletaria to be the hooked talon of a brazen god of wrath—her sword drew forth their innards and sent their heads and hands dancing through the air. Like a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower, she would dip elegantly now and then, with neck outstretched, to bite the living and the dead. Strings of gore hung from her smiling lips, which glistened black around the golden fangs.


    Balletaria tore her eyes from the horror long enough to spit her sword through one of the things trying to join the focused battle. As soon as Shaitaan had slaughtered the biggest one, the others seemed uninterested in anyone but her.


    Vorga appeared at her side, breathing heavily and leaning on her spear.


    “What in the name of all the gods is she doing?” she gasped. She blew at a strand of gray hair that had become plastered across her lips with sweat.


    Balletaria swallowed and flicked her blade with a practiced snap, sending a spray of dark, congealing muck to the earth. The viscous fluid clung stubbornly to the steel.


    “She’s winning,” she murmured, though the words tasted wrong in her mouth. Victory was about surviving. It was about living out the day with the enemy far behind you. It was walking away from a fight in one piece. This was none of those things. This was something deeper than mere violence, something raw and unchecked. Balletaria saw no technique, no desire to survive—just an eruption of fury that had been waiting, festering beneath the surface. Now it was loosed, tearing through the goblin-infested woods in wild, blood-slicked arcs, staining stone and trees alike in its wake.


    Vorga let out a grim chuckle, but it was short-lived. Shy was more than just winning. She was reveling. She drank in the violence, exulted in the carnage. Each movement was a dance of raw, feral beauty—a ritual performed to exactness by the most devoted, fanatic acolyte. The battlefield was her stage, the slain her tribute, and she moved through them like smoke, each strike a perfect, merciless note in a symphony of ruin.


    Balletaria had known killers before, had fought alongside those who killed out of necessity, out of duty, even out of cold pleasure. She''d seen the gang lords of Hubris torture their own men to death over a handful of coppers or the wrong words. But this was worse. It was as if the woman they had traveled with, the warrior they had bled beside, had been little more than a shell, a fragile vessel for the thing that now prowled among the corpses.


    I came here to assassinate...this?


    She clenched her jaw, tightening her grip on her sword. Chapriotti''s task had just become intolerable.


    **********


    A goblin, either braver or more foolish than the rest, lunged. The Maw did not parry, did not dodge. She caught the thing’s wrist mid-strike, like a child taking the hand of a beloved playmate. She twisted, and relished the wet pop of a joint giving way. The goblin shrieked, and its pain was a melody that sang so sweetly to the Maw. The cries of the dying were music, a wild, soaring crescendo to which she danced with unbridled delight.


    Her teeth found its throat. The first bite tore flesh, the second severed something vital. Warmth flooded her mouth, musky and thick. The body spasmed, its life''s rhythm ending in a final, shuddering exhale. The Maw let it drop, exhaling, savoring.


    The others hesitated. They whimpered, their snarls turning to pitiful chittering. Weak. The goblins had already begun to melt away, slinking into the shadows of the trees, their eyes wide with terror. They would not return. She stood, chest rising and falling, tasting the air, feeling the blood cooling on her tongue. The game was ending too soon. Her grip on the sword slackened in disappointment. Her dark eyes flicked across the battlefield, searching, yearning—


    No. Too soon! It’s always over too soon!


    Then she saw her.


    Curled within the twisted hollow of the grown-together trees, she was small, trembling, pressed into the gnarled embrace of the roots like a wounded fawn. The longbow lay abandoned at her side. The painted tips of her ears peeked through smooth braids, and her wide, terrified eyes reflected the carnage as though she were trapped in a nightmare from which she could not wake. Her breath was shallow, her hands clenched against the damp earth, but she did not flee. Spots of dark blood clung to her tunic—not her own, not yet.


    The girl was a tapestry yet to be woven, an empty canvas yet to receive the first strokes. The Maw would correct that. She would create such art to bring tears to the eye, nourishment to the soul, music the gods themselves would dance to.


    She stepped forward. The girl did not move. That suited the Maw just fine. She did not care if her playthings put up a struggle. Only that they died.


    “Amani—” A voice, distant, irrelevant.


    Another step. The sword lifted, eager and insatiable, its wicked edge humming with the echoes of slaughter. It was a lover whispering for another kiss, a hound straining at the leash.


    “Amani, run!”


    The pygmy woman with gray hair appeared, her spear in her hand. She stood between the Maw and her prey.


    “That’s enough, girl. You’ve had your fun. Best not get carried away.” Meaningless words.


    She took another step.


    The tip of the spear lowered, and the pygmy woman’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.


    “Take one more step, and I will poke some manners into you, d’ya ken?”


    But the Maw could not be commanded. She could not be bought or bargained with. She smiled wide, let the black void of her mouth stand between them, and took another step. The point of the spear bit into her shoulder, and somewhere far away, in some pit deep inside, a woman screamed in pain, but not the Maw. It only made the music within her swell to a stirring crescendo. Perhaps this pygmy might prove better prey than the trembling waif, after all. The girl could wait.


    “Don’t try it!” the pygmy warned, but the sword was already moving.


    **********


    Balletaria watched bewildered as Shy, her shoulder dripping red from walking onto the halfling’s spear, struck down with her sword. Vorga was too quick for it and stepped clear of its path, but her eyes went wide when the blade turned like a leaf in the wind and flew again, this time towards her throat. She just ducked the blow and rolled away, her short feet carrying her out of the range of that terrible hooked blade. But Shy had begun to move, and she was nearly too fast to escape.


    Balletaria had seen men three times Shy’s size go down from a wound half as bad. The bleeding, the shock of it, should have been enough to bring her to her knees, but the savage seemed to barely notice it at all. She smiled and laughed like there was nothing quite so amusing, quite so funny, as the prospect butchering Vorga to pieces.


    Balletaria sprinted to Flora’s side, hauling the magus to her feet. Flora swayed but remained standing, blinking like a dazed owl.


    “Oh good,” she slurred. “I didn’t die.”


    Balletaria swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Not yet.”


    “Not yet,” Flora echoed, smiling faintly. She nodded to Shy, who’d just barely missed scything down the halfling from behind. “Classic dungeon boss second phase.”


    Balletaria had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t care. She tightened her grip on Flora’s arm, heart hammering against her ribs, feeling utterly helpless as the Maw bore down on Vorga.


    “Can you do anything about this?” She was surprised to hear a tinge of pleading in her own voice, but then, who could blame her? The more the evening stretched on, the more desperate things seemed to become. She watched Shy’s speed and mercilessness and wondered if they’d not been safer in the hands of the goblins.


    “Oh, I might have a trick or two,” said Flora. She pushed Balletaria away with her hand and brought herself to her full height, though she was still shaking. She gripped the staff in both hands and raised it into the air.


    **********


    Vorga was running, her boots digging into the blood-muddied soil as Shaitaan closed the distance between the two of them. She was smiling. Smiling as Vorga turned just in time to see the sword coming.


    Vorga rolled beneath the cut, springing to her feet with squirrel-like speed, the spear point thrust forward. Her feet adjusted, bracing for the inevitable riposte. “Madwoman,” she hissed. “I’ll put you in the dirt if I have to.”


    Shy lunged.


    Vorga twisted, trying to sidestep the oncoming sword stroke while keeping her spear where it could do the most damage, , but she was not fast enough. A dark hand with a grip like iron seized the spear’s haft, yanking her forward, off-balance. The next moment, the world lurched sideways as an iron-hard knee slammed into her gut. Breath fled her lungs. She barely had time to register the heel that came up next, cracking against her temple. Stars burst across her vision. She hit the ground hard, rolling, dirt in her teeth.


    Shy was speaking, deep, gutteral growls and hisses. Vorga had never been to the southern empire, but she imagined this was her native tongue. The words were as harsh, as beautiful, and as incomprehensible as the woman herself had become.


    She could see the strange sword catching the red light of the sun setting beyond the trees. It rose into the air, the hand that held it as swift and undeniable as a bolt of lightning. When Vorga had first met Shy, she''d called her soft. Well, she wasn''t now, not un any uncertain terms. The eyes she saw now were hard as a knife edge.


    So this was how she would die, as an old woman with a mouth full of dirt, with her deeds undone and her daughter unavenged. There would be no stopping that sword, and it would part her asunder and leave all her ambitions and plans to the weeds.


    Well, if this is it, then there''s no reason I shouldn''t use it.


    She turned her blind left eye towards her killer, felt the moon-shaped scar beneath it begin to grow hot.


    Damn you, woman, for making me do this now. Not what I intended to use this for, but it''s either now or never.


    But another power, one that was not her own, intervened.


    **********


    Amani’s vision swam, the world sluggish as she tried to focus. She lay sprawled in the mud, her limbs weak, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her body screamed in protest as she tried to move, tried to will herself upright. The battle raged around her, a swirl of motion and steel. One moment, she''d been facing a horde of goblins, and the next, Shy had stood above her, sword in hand, fanged mouth black as death. Someone had come, had stood between her and certain death, and now she was alone again.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Her foot nudged something hard. It was her bow. It was lying on the ground near her feet. How did that get there? Hadn''t she been holding it a moment ago? She''d remembered holding it, trying to draw the string, to keep the arrow on its rest. She''d killed with it before, hadn''t she? But then the goblins came, and everything that came after was a blur.


    She saw figures darting between the trees, glints of flashing metal, cries of pain, and a shrill, mad laughter that turned her guts to ice. It was Shy, somehow transformed, perhaps not physically, but nevertheless changed. She was now a creature of relentless violence. Gone was the guarded, lonely, intelligent woman she''d met yesterday. In her place was the love of death, personified.


    She was chasing someone. It was Vorga, the halfling. She dodged and rolled as Shy''s evil-looking sword sliced the air around her. Vorga turned to deliver a thrust of her own, but Shy had caught it, turned it aside, and struck the cleric to the ground.


    Amani wanted to do something. She wanted to cry out, to run to them and to stop the senseless murder, to turn back, with her own hands, the hands of time so Shy could go back to being a lonely woman in the company of outcasts, back to when Amani was not so afraid.


    But time, like death, could not be denied or turned aside like a spear thrust or a falling sword. No matter how much Amani willed herself to stand, to speak, to run to those who needed her, she was as fixed to the ground as though she''d been shackled there.


    "Catena dei!" a voice cried.


    There was a searing light, the almost deafening clank of metal, and Shy was thrashing against what seemed to be chains that glowed with fierce, arcane light, chains that encircled her body from chest to ankle.


    Vorga flitted away, her hand pressed to her blind eye.


    Amani barely had time to process the sight before hands grasped her shoulders. She flinched, panic surging, but then she heard a voice—firm, steady, urgent. "Amani, get up."


    Egret.


    She was kneeling beside her, her face smeared with dirt and sweat, her armor scuffed, scratched, and streaked with the black innards of the creatures, but her eyes were hard. Amani groaned, her limbs trembling as she tried to push herself up. She wasn’t sure she could. The weight of fear pressed down on her heavier than Egret''s weight of steel.


    Egret looped an arm under her and hauled her up. “Lean on me if you have to," she said, her voice as cold as winter, "but you will get moving. You''re not dying here.”


    Amani’s legs barely held her, but she clung to Egret, swallowing back a whimper. Then a sound cut through the chaos—a deep, bubbling laugh. It was Shy.


    “Little mageling,” she crooned, dark eyes gleaming through the tangle of warbraids matted to her face. “You think your glamour will hold me? Soon I will be free, then you will know the embrace of the Black Maw.” Flora knew she was speaking in Xoactali, the harsh tongue of the southern mortal empire, land of fierce warriors with painted faces and priests that plucked organs from sacrificial victims for the pleasure of their gods. She doubted whether any of her other companions could understand her.


    Flora’s voice came sharp, filled with forced bravado. “Well aren''t we chatty? I don''t suppose that was an apology, was it?”


    Shy (or was she the Black Maw?) answered with shriek that seemed to come from deep in her guts, in her bones, in her blood. The sigils trembled and flickered. The chains seemed to groan in protest.


    Amani stumbled as Egret left her, sprinting towards the impending disaster, her mace gripped in her fist and her shield slipping from her shoulder.


    "No," groaned Flora, her teeth gritted and her face pinched as though in terrible strain, "you can''t! That shouldn''t be possible!"


    Shy snarled again, long ropes of black gore trailing from a mouth full of vicious teeth. The light flickered again, and the chains squealed. There was a BOOM and the world turned sideways. Light filled every corner of the forest for the briefest moment before the whole thing was plunged again into the long, dark shadows of dusk. Pine needles and dust rained down from the trees above as they swayed with the concussion.


    When Amani found her senses again, she realized the glyphed chains that had bound Shy were gone, and that she stood, swaying, drunken almost, but with the sword still clutched in her gore-soaked hands.


    Flora was on her hands and knees, her staff in shattered pieces just beyond her trembling fingers. The spinning spheres and rings were still now, scattered in pieces around the shards of the shaft. Before, it had seemed made of light made solid. Now, it was crumbling glass, dim and dead.


    A long shadow fell across her, Shy''s. The sword was raised, ready for murder.


    Then Balletaria was there. Steel rang against steel as she intercepted the killing strike. “Snap out of it!” she shouted. “This isn’t you!”


    Amani saw Shy tilt her head, a cruel smile twisting her lips. “Is it not?” she answered in Xoactali.


    Then Balletaria crumpled. Shy, the Black Maw, as she called herself, moved too fast, striking with brutal precision, slipping through the gaps in her guard like water. Amani saw her fall, saw her head snap back as she hit the dirt. She didn’t rise.


    It was then that Amani realized she was standing alone.


    Egret was charging forward, a fighter''s growl in her throat, her bladed mace raised high above her shield.


    Dark, manic eyes saw her coming. Lips curled into a smirk. “Finally, someone worth killing!” she said in a tongue no one but Amani could understand.


    Egret didn’t answer Shy''s harsh, clicking, unintelligible taunt. Her lips moved, her mutterings what Amani recognized as holy verse from The Cycle of Seasons, the book of Aethelwyne, the All-mother. Sunlight seemed to blossom on the head of the mace, turning the steel into solid daylight.


    The mace rose and fell, catching nothing but Shy’s thirsty laughter. The sword answered, colliding with the shield with a world-shaking CLANG that sent the armored woman reeling. She found her footing in time to duck a savage blow to her head from the same blade, and her mace swept forward, failing again to harm more than the pine needles falling between them.


    The fight was brutal, relentless. Amani could barely follow the speed of their movements—steel and fists, blocks and counterstrikes. Egret was strong, but Shy was stronger, faster, tireless. Each time Egret deflected, countered, the Black Maw was already moving again, pressing forward. Amani watched in helpless horror as Egret staggered, as the Maw slipped through her defenses, as something small—too small—gave way.


    A single strap of leather, cut clean, the flesh behind it miraculously untouched. But the polished steel cuisse flapped free of Egret’s thigh, hanging useless by her knee.


    The next strike came fast and merciless, driving deep into Egret’s unprotected thigh. Egret gasped, her leg buckling. She fell in a clanking heap as Shy pulled the blade free.


    **********


    The Maw stood over her, blade dripping. She’d laid the armored woman low, maimed her, and now, she would finish the great work on her, then she would start on the others.


    “I shall carve the truth of the world into your flesh,” she crooned. “I will write such secrets in you that you will be transformed into holy verse, psalms of blood and flesh and pain that will…that will…”


    Something was wrong. Her fingers felt weak. Her arms were trembling. Her eyes grew heavy and she swayed as though drunk.


    No, she tried to say, but her lips would no longer move. No, no, no, no, NO! It’s too soon! I haven’t had enough time!


    It was never enough time. There had been a time when she never slept, when she could dance and sing and work her glorious work for days at a time. When she and the dreaming woman were nearly one, hardly distinguishable from one another. But now she slept long. She had to satisfy herself with moments of wakefulness, of life, between long droughts of murky dreams.


    No! She tried to protest again, but her body had betrayed her completely now. Her eyes swayed from side to side, to the armored woman, unmoving and bleeding on the ground. To the pointed-eared waif trembling behind her. To the liar, the silver-tongued woman with the needle sword and the pygmy woman gasping as she leaned against a tree. To the sorceress, her staff broken. Her companions. The closest things in the world she had to friends.


    “I will kill you all,” was all she could manage to say before darkness took her, before the inky, sticky dreams took her again, suspending her like a mosquito in amber.


    **********


    Silence stretched. Balletaria watched the others, wounded, battered, bleeding, standing around the bodies strewn on the ground.


    Shy stirred, and they all flinched. Balletaria didn’t know whether to run her through with the tip of her blade or to sprint for safety.


    But Shy only writhed on the ground, crying and moaning as though in excruciating pain. She thrashed as though unable to stand, unable to rise to sitting. Her sword lay forgotten just out of hands reach. It still had Egret’s blood on it.


    Amani swallowed, her throat dry. “What do we do with her?”


    Balletaria, stirring, breathless, wiped blood from her mouth. “We take Egret and get the hells out of here.”


    “And her?” Vorga’s voice. It trembled slightly.


    They hesitated.


    Shy cried out, as though in answer. She took in heaving gasps, her limbs moved as though trying to swim through mud. For all that ferocity, for all her deadly speed, it was as though she had acted on borrowed strength, strength that had to be repaid with interest. She lay there, helpless as a baby, moaning and squeaking like one just born.


    “We can’t leave her.”


    It was Amani.


    “The hells we can’t,” Balletaria corrected her.


    “She saved us from the goblins.”


    “She nearly killed all of us!”


    Another stretch of silence. Egret stirred weakly. With her wound, she wouldn’t last long. Balletaria’s eyes searched the trees. Was that another eye glittering in the darkness, or was it just a trick of the light?


    “The lass will die if we don’t do something now,” gasped Vorga, nudging the butt of her spear towards Egret.


    “Well, that would be the whole point of why you’re here, isn’t it?” snapped Balletaria.


    For a moment, Vorga was silent, scowling. “Not here,” she answered.


    “Not here,” Balletaria repeated. “Then you grab one end, I’ll take the other. We just need to be anywhere but here right now.”


    “We can’t leave her!” Amani repeated, louder this time. Her eyes glistened as though on the edge of tears.


    Now? Balletaria thought. Now you have something to say? You want to do something? Where was this initiative when all the killing started? When Vorga and Flora and Egret and I all took a beating?


    The question hung between them all.


    Leave her?


    Kill her?


    Or take her with them?