“How the fuck did you know I was here?” Tybalt said, answering her question with another question.

  “All of my senses,” Dero lied. She could actually see, hear, and smell him, but only now because she was fairly close. It was her skill that had done the key perceptual work, and frankly, it was impressive that he had entered her Perfect Spatial Awareness without her waking immediately. Another mystery. But she couldn’t let him know how her power worked. He might be an enemy. “First, you smell.” She sniffed the air exaggeratedly. “You smell… like sex.”

  This inconsiderate jerk… You had sex after the feast, got covered in the smell, and then rushed over here? You didn’t stop and hold your lover or anything? For a fraction of a second, she pictured it- the human entwined with the woman who’d been all over him at the feast- and then she banished the image from her mind.

  “Um, anyway, second, you’re loud. I have these big things on the side of my head for a reason.” She flicked one finger over the tip of a long, pointy ear. “Third, as soon as anyone looked, they were going to see you. Your dark clothes might camouflage you against the night sky, but they stand out brightly against the sand.” All of that was more or less bullshit, meant to keep him from figuring out that her Perfect Spatial Awareness had detected him, which rendered all of her probably factually accurate observations about him moot.

  “Bullshit,” Tybalt said. “Everyone in that cart was sleeping, so you didn’t see me. I didn’t move enough for any living thing to have heard me. Unless you can hear my heart beating in my chest right now or something.” She could - they were very close, and his heart was pounding - but for all she knew, he was right that he’d been quiet. “And I refuse to believe that my smell woke you.”

  She almost wanted to smile.

  Yep, it’s bullshit.

  “Be that as it may, you’d better answer my question right now. The fuck are you doing here?”

  “I’ll explain, but if I were you, I would take that blade away from my neck first,” Tybalt said in a quiet, steady voice.

  Does he think he has a position to play here?

  “You sound awfully calm for a man who’s this close to being in two pieces. Maybe that excites you, though.”

  “Do you think it’s the first time I’ve had a blade against my throat?”

  “No, you seem like you have that effect on people,” she replied.

  “Well, no one has decided to hold me at knife point sooner after meeting me than you.”

  I’m perceptive like that.

  “And why would you move the dagger away, if you were me?” Dero asked, a little amused. “Aside from your personal charm, of course.”

  “The charm factor is a given. I just assumed you didn’t want to end up with a massive arrow hole in your torso. It’s the kind of thing a specialized healer might be able to fix if they tended to it fast, but then again, with Kistana’s arrows, you might not be alive even if your caravan had a dedicated healer. Whereas I can repair a gaping neck wound.”

  Dero smirked. You’re bluffing. Then her expression faltered. Wait… No fucking way!

  Out of her peripheral vision, she could sense a tiny movement that hadn’t been there before. She pulled the void dagger back, clearly away from Tybalt’s neck, then turned to look.

  The catgirl from earlier had an arrow nocked on her massive bow, pointed directly at Dero. The strange, confusing, infuriating thing was that she was clearly within the range of Dero’s Perfect Spatial Awareness. Maybe not when Dero had been in the cart, but right now, certainly.

  Unlike whatever figures had been helping Tybalt in the mist earlier that day, it seemed that this Kistana could completely hide herself from detection until she wanted someone to notice her.

  Who are these people?

  “Why are you here in the first place?” Dero asked, eyes narrowed. “Couldn’t wait to see me again?”

  “You mentioned a rat problem that the caravan was having,” Tybalt said.

  “That’s why?” she exclaimed.

  He nodded.

  “Yes, we have a rat problem,” the dark elf said skeptically. “And you’re the one to solve it?”

  “Believe it or not, I might be.” He made the eye movements that Dero had learned to recognize were indicative of someone interacting with their system screen - Rude to do that when I’m right here - and then he gathered a dark green mana around his hand. Dero automatically took a defensive stance, trying to put Tybalt between her and the catgirl - and then the human made a sort of quiet squeaking noise.

  It sounded just like a rat.

  A moment later, to Dero’s disbelief, she sensed a rat pop out from under the cart closest to them. Then it ran over, and nuzzled up to Tybalt’s glowing hand.

  That… could just be a fluke. No… It really couldn’t. Who the fuck are these people? What kind of class lets you create magical mist and tame beasts?

  Only one explanation truly made sense, reluctant though Dero was to accept it.

  “Are you the Hero?” Dero asked after a moment. She allowed the dagger, which she had moved away from his neck, to disappear completely.

  “Am I the what?” Tybalt asked.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You heard me… Are you the Hero?”

  “No. No, I’m not. Why would you ask that?”

  “I heard once that the Hero’s class lets him learn any skill as long as he has someone to teach him. I thought maybe…”

  I thought, from the way the villagers talked about you, maybe the Hero was out here doing some heroic things, just for a nice change of pace.

  Heroes, in Dero’s mind, were just dogs of the Goddess of Love and God of War. But she was open to being wrong. If Tybalt had been the Hero, the cockiness and the actual heroism as recognized by the beastfolk would both have a simple explanation.

  “Nah,” Tybalt said. “If anything, the Hero might be out to get me.”

  “Really?”

  “No, just joking.”

  Did he pause before he answered that?

  “Lame joke.”

  Tybalt coaxed the next rat over, and it too drew close to him as if he was an old friend. Both creatures seemed to eat his mana as Dero watched. Her eyes narrowed. Something about this obviously didn’t make sense. She carefully circled and repositioned herself so that Kistana would no longer have a clear shot at her without hitting Tybalt, but the catgirl simply moved to the side to keep the elf in her sights. The best Dero could do was make her shoot at a bad angle.

  “Why didn’t you come out here during the daytime?” the dark elf asked.

  “Hm?” Tybalt said as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “If you’re here to solve the rat problem, why did you sneak up like a thief in the night?”

  “Who said I was here to solve the rat problem?” he replied.

  She materialized another void dagger.

  “I’m sorry, I think I was asking you these questions too nicely. You’re getting a bit comfortable, aren’t you?”

  “I’m very comfortable,” Tybalt said without looking up. “You don’t have to threaten me. I’m happy to answer your questions, as long as you’re willing to help me out a little.”

  “Help you out with what?”

  “Well, my plan here was to help you guys out by feeding the rats with my aura,” Tybalt said straightforwardly. “If I feed them enough mana, and keep feeding them regularly, they won’t eat your food when you inevitably resupply here and go on to your next destination. I just have to keep them nice and full, and you just have to secure your food properly this time, to make it hard to get into. Then they’ll get off at your next stop and go eat other people’s stuff.”

  That plan was dubious on multiple levels, but Dero focused on one point.

  “Why are we taking the rats back at all? I thought you were taking them away.”

  “No, I wasn’t. There’s no benefit to me or the beastfolk from doing that.”

  “Silly me, I thought this was for our benefit.”

  “If it was, why would I come here secretly like, I think you said, a thief in the night?”

  “What are you doing to the fucking rats?”

  “Infecting them with a disease- that your caravan members will be immune to, I should add.”

  “So, the rats will infect each other and die?”

  “I’ll explain it if you promise to help me.”

  “Or I could just kill the rats and kill you.”

  “Who says these two are the first ones I infected? Maybe if I die, the disease becomes dangerous and gets the people in the caravan.” He raised his voice slightly. “Fuck, maybe if I die, I’ve ordered Kistana to just slaughter all the people in your caravan.”

  Dero swallowed. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yes, I would. I would do whatever I need to do to accomplish my goals. You don’t know me very well, but just trust me on that.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You can teleport, right?”

  “What makes you say - oh, sure. Fuck. Yes, I can fucking teleport.”

  “Teleport me and the rats to the nearest populated area. That way, I don’t need to leave them in the caravan.”

  “So, you were going to use Carlos to transport your… plague-infected rats to populated areas?” A cold sweat broke out on the back of Dero’s neck. She had experienced the brutality of how humans treated demihumans and each other in warfare. And she had seen disease. She had seen how sickness could sweep away the people you loved the most, or people the gods supposedly loved the most.

  On one occasion, in a besieged city, she had even witnessed how warfare exacerbated a plague. Fortunately, at the time, she had been at a place in her life where she could just leave.

  But Dero had never seen someone deliberately combine pestilence and warfare like this. Had she ever heard of such a thing? She couldn’t be certain.

  He nodded.

  “That would ruin his reputation, you prick!” she exclaimed. “If anyone suspected- ”

  “The town will get wiped out,” Tybalt said. “No survivors except children, pregnant women, and women who have given birth. It’s a very targeted disease. And it works on a delay from when the rats are dropped off. Time for people to leave and other people to arrive. They would never have suspected Carlos or his caravan was the point of origin.”

  “Still, it’s…”

  A disaster even for the survivors…

  “My people - I mean, the beastfolk - are going to be wiped out by the humans.” He lowered his voice. “I’m the only one with the power to do something about it. The first thing I need is to destroy the populated areas closest to here, to make it impossible to supply an army. I’m going to soften them up with disease first, and then I’ll take over the towns, loot them for supplies, and burn them. We’ll take care of the widows and orphaned children. But this has to be done.”

  His voice was steady, but not entirely calm, Dero noted. He had thought about what he was about to do, and it bothered him. But he was resolved.

  If it wasn’t my business that the beastfolk were getting wiped out, why should I care what he does to the humans? she told herself. A part of her felt ugly that she was even considering helping him. But the alternative was that she kill him and try to chase down every rat he might have infected, all while protecting the caravan from both possible infection and from the catgirl - who would also be trying to kill Dero for murdering her master. She might be condemning the beastfolk to death by doing that, too.

  The thought gave her a headache.

  “So, you want me to teleport you and the rats to the nearest town,” Dero said slowly.

  “If you could teleport me to whatever towns the caravan won’t be stopping at, that would actually be best,” Tybalt said. “The more targeted I make the virus, the more energy creating it consumes. Not having to make your friends immune to it would save me a lot of energy.”

  She let out a long sigh. She thought she might regret this someday, but she couldn’t see how.

  “All right. Three towns. Just outside their limits. It shouldn’t take long. Then you and I are finished. No more infected rats in the caravan. If there are…” She let the threat hang in the air.

  “I understand,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Fuck you,” she said in a low voice. “Making me get involved when I don’t want to be involved. Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “I’m a leader of one side in a war,” Tybalt said. “Doing what I have to do. That’s all.”

  Dero sighed again and shook her head.

  After this, I’m taking a long trip to the other side of the continent. Maybe I’ll go back with Carlos after all. I don’t want to be here when the consequences of his decisions arrive.

  “Let me go in and take a look at our map.”