Drip. Drip.

Jarod watched the water bead up and roll off of the tree's small leaf and land in the puddle, sending a tiny shockwave of water spiraling out from it. He had been watching the water do this for the past hour. Normally, people that easily amused by puddles and dripping water are studying to become hydroelectric engineers. Jarod was not. Jarod was the chosen hero of the New Moon rebel army.

He stood just under six feet tall, with tousled reddish-orange hair that was spiked forward. On his back he carried a broadsword that was held there by a leather belt attached to the sheath of the blade. He wore dingy steel shoulder armor over his gray shirt and had platinum bracers on his forearms, and his blue eyes were permanently and intensely fixed in a look of what could have been intense concentration. He looked like a very intelligent fellow.

Which, of course, he wasn't. He had tested well below average on nearly every intelligence test there was, save for the Brachendagen Reaction Test, which tests the subject's intelligence and quick thinking by hurling a gigantic rock at them from a trebuchet. If they get out of the way, they pass. Jarod had managed to do this, and had gotten a free ice cream cone for his self-preservation instinct.

"Jarod!" A feminine voice, followed by a giggle. "Come on! We can look at puddles later!" Jarod stood up and walked back to join his companions.

"What the hell are you doing, getting separated from the rest of the group? Don't you know there's-"

"Who's the leader, Bernard? Who?" Jarod puffed out his chest as he looked at the brawny axe-wielder.

"You are, but damn it, we've-"

"HEY! Don't be so mean to Jarod, Bernard!" The girl in the white dress put her hands on her hips. "Without his leadership, we'd all be dead now!"

"With his leadership, I'm surprised we aren't dead."

The girl ignored Bernard and turned to Jarod again. "Come on, let's go find Tia!" They skipped down the path merrily. Bernard swore again and rested his massive shoulders against a tree. He folded his gigantic gauntleted arms across his chest and inhaled deeply.

Bernard was a truly massive man - his shoe size was 26 and three eighths. He stood a good two feet taller than the other members of his party, with dark brown skin, hazel eyes, thick black goatee, and a long scar on his right cheek. His armor was polished blue steel with gigantic shoulder pieces and a set of metal plates around his waist that protected his unarmored legs. On his back, he carried a gigantic platinum battleaxe, which he had affectionately named "Lucille", after his ex-mother-in-law. He watched the two compatriots skip off down the forest path.

Surprised they ain't floated off yet, he thought.

"Isn't it a nice day today, Jarod?" Eliza said.

"...whatever."

"Tee hee! Oh, you're so funny, Jarod!" Eliza was a princess, her father was a king from the Western Province. From birth, she had been educated in the ways of royalty - how a princess carried herself, how she spoke, how she dressed and ate. Her father was desperate to have a daughter that wouldn't embarrass him at dinner parties, so he spent untold amounts of money on her schooling, finally turning out a true princess. Of course, he had been so focused on making her into a couth lady that he had neglected to pay for any other classes, so he had a daughter that spoke properly, bowed just so, ate with the right forks, and was dumb as a post. For some reason, she had decided to rebel against her father and left to join the resistance against the Empire. She had forgotten why, exactly. Of course, Eliza tended to forget things approximately thirty times faster than normal people.

Jarod looked into her crystalline blue eyes and watched her bleach-blonde hair blow across her face. She was beautiful. As he stared into her eyes, he could only ask one thing…

"...do you have a sandwich?"

"Tee hee! Jarod, you and your sandwiches! I already told you, we're going to wait for Tia before we open the picnic basket. She was going to go out scouting, remember?" Eliza heard a rustle in the trees. "Is that her?"

Eliza got her answer when a ear-piercing scream echoed through the otherwise silent woods. A orange-and-black blur fell out of the treetops and landed with a thud in front of them. Eliza approached the tattered heap carefully. "Are you OK, Tia?"

Tia answered Eliza's question by leaping to her feet and grinning, flipping her shoulder-length black hair behind her back. "Just fine!" She brushed the dust off her scant amount of clothing. Eliza furrowed her eyebrow a little as she looked at Tia's low-cut, navel-revealing tunic and her impossibly short shorts, both a dark shade of orange, then back at her own simple silken white dress. Yeah, you just keep trying to catch Jarod's eye. See where it gets you, you little tramp. She stopped herself. A princess, even one who had more or less abdicated her position, shouldn't be thinking those thoughts. It wasn't very ladylike, though it felt good. Tramp.

Tia was the group's scout, as well as their lockpicking expert and stealth aficionado, being an outcast member of a tribe of desert nomads known only as the Lon-Par. The Lon-Par had clans sprawled all over Altyma's desert plains and valleys. Very rarely did two clans see each other, but when they did, it was a cause for celebration, resulting in ceremonies and wild parties that lasted for weeks - being nomads, they didn't have anywhere particular to go in a hurry. One party, in fact, had lasted for a decade, mainly due to the fact that nobody wanted to be rude and leave before the others.

The clan was largely focused on hunting and farming. Honor was highly valued in their society, and to disgrace the clan was a sin worthy of exile. One could make the argument that exile from a blistering hot, bone-dry desert wasn't a big threat - in fact, more than one exile, faced with their fate, had said in a tone drier than the sands from which they were being banished, "Oh, no, please don't. Anything but that." Supposedly there was some dishonor in it, but most just enjoyed the opportunity to see anything green or wet for a change.

Tia had the odds stacked against her from the beginning. Her family had been on the outs with the rest of her clan for years before she had been born, and nothing seemed to be able to change that. She figured that if she was going to be considered an outcast, she might as well go all the way with it. Rather than learning the ways of training beasts of burden and procurement of desert herbs like her brethren, Tia had decided from a very early age that she was going to hone her skills in the areas of espionage and thievery. At first, she started small, filching sand pies from the ovens in other's tents and then dumping them behind a dune when she realized that they really were made of sand. However, she soon began to steal pendants and baubles, jewelry, just about anything she could get her hands on. Her crowning achievement was when she managed to snatch the chief's hut while he was still in it, completely oblivious to the situation (he was engrossed in a filthy magazine that a caravan of traders had brought to the tribe). He didn't notice until he felt a slight draft and went to draw the curtains, then realized that there were no curtains, and indeed no house. Tia was exiled the next day, and wandered the plains until she met up with the resistance movement, which is how she got where she was at the moment.

"Yeah, just slipped," she said as she attempted to rub the dirt out of her legs. "Moss," she added, as though that explained everything.

"Well, I hope you didn't break your leg, of course. That would be awful." Eliza was attempting to feign concern, and failing at it.

"Nope, it's fine. Isn't it, Jarod?" she asked as she seductively stood with one foot on a rock and caressed her leg in front of him. Jarod blinked. "It doesn't look broken," he said in a deadpan voice. Tia scowled and put her leg back down. Eliza smirked.

"Anyway, the coast seems to be pretty much clear. I don't see any enemy activity, so we shouldn't have too much trouble. Where's Bernard?"

Eliza giggled. "He's waiting for us back in the clearing. We should probably go get him!" Eliza was very proficient at stating the obvious.

They ambled back towards the clearing, Tia insisting on walking in front of Jarod. "For safety reasons," she said. "I've got better senses than both of you." This was a lie, Eliza thought as she watched Tia walk seductively in front of him. Yeah, you just keep that up. Scantily-clad goods will only get you so far. Maidenly purity will win his heart yet.

Tramp.

Gasopi decided he wasn't much of a riding person as he was jostled and bumped along on the back of a pemda. The two-legged, semi-reptilian beast of burden that the Empire used occasionally as a troop transport was not built for comfort, even with a saddle. Rosalyn seemed to be enjoying herself as she rode her own. Gasopi watched her handle the creature with almost expert precision. How can anyone actually enjoy this?

They had been riding most of the morning. Aside from the uncomfortable ride, it was a pleasant trip - the scenery was pristine and tranquil, and almost lulled Gasopi to sleep. He was, of course, immediately reawoken by the feel of the animal's spine slamming into him again. He scowled. Cirso didn't seem to be enjoying the trip either - being too short to ride his own pemda, he was riding double in front of Rosalyn, and had kept his arms crossed for the entire duration, scowling at being treated like a child. He hadn't taken his seating arrangement with dignity.

"I'm an incredibly powerful wizard! This is sickening! I should at least have a different mode of transport!"

Rosalyn had sighed. "Cirso, your opinion is important and all, but if you don't get into your kiddie seat right now I'm going to bash you in the head with a rock and tie you to it, OK?" Needless to say, the trip had gotten off to a rocky start.

They came to a stop at a cliff overlooking the valley where the forest stood. Gasopi dismounted and grabbed a pair of binoculars to scout out the location. Rosalyn fed her pemda some grass and Cirso continued his nonstop streak of complaining. "...uncomfortable ride, this is the worst kind of atrocity! The kind against me! If I weren't so peaceable, I'd burn you both alive right here! I can do it!"

"Of course you can, Cirso." Rosalyn stroked the pemda behind its ears, it made a happy chirping noise that sounded something like "Phweeet".

"Watch me set that bush on fire, over there! Look at it!" He pointed at a nearby shrub and started chanting various incantations. Rosalyn rolled her eyes.

"Mushrua, ik ben lein..." He frantically wove his hands in the air in the general direction of the plant. "Victros vini mirak!" He separated his arms with a flourish. The bush remained unburned. Cirso growled. "Annos trewen ut wert!" The bush stared back at him impassively. He kicked dirt at it. Rosalyn laughed.

"You're adorable, Cirso. Like a little kid in his mother's bathrobe." She patted him on the head. He bit at her, which was a difficult proposition given the fact that his face was still obscured by his hood, then shuffled towards a rock to sit down. Rosalyn stood next to Gasopi.

"See anything?"

"I think that's Naeremae over there." He pointed. "But what's that?" Rosalyn looked through the lenses. There was a wisp of smoke spiralling out from the center of the forest. "A campfire?" she asked. Gasopi put the lenses away. "I don't know. We'd better get down there fast, anyway." They ran back to the pemdas, Rosalyn grabbing Cirso on the way (which got her a kick to the hip), saddled up, and galloped down the path towards the forest.

Bernard crouched by the fire, stoking it, watching the flames grow higher. When they reached an acceptable height, he reclined against a hollowed log they had been using for a bench. With Eliza and Tia off trying to seduce Jarod, Bernard had been left to set up camp. It didn't really bother him. There were only two tents to set up - the tough green canvas tent that he and Jarod shared, and the pink silk tent that Eliza had packed for the girls to share. Jarod was often in the pink tent, so Bernard often had the guys' tent to his lonesome. Many nights he would just lie back and stare at the battered canvas walls and think about how he had gotten here, traipsing through the woods with these numbskulls, until he drifted off to sleep.

He had been trained under his father, Arcan, a respected captain in the employ of the Duke Felsworth von Bratenschtauff. Arcan was a heavy weapons expert, specializing in axes. Young Bernard idolized his dad and followed him everywhere. As a child, he would sit on a nearby hill and watch his father bark out orders to the new recruits. He grabbed a nearby twig and practiced parrying and thrusting, overhead slashes, everything he saw the recruits doing. As their awkward, unsure movements became more and more confident and precise, so did his.

When Bernard reached the age of 13, Arcan had begun training him as his protégé. The young man proved to have exceptional strength and an ideal build to use the heavy axe as a weapon - indeed, he was almost three times the size of his old man. Arcan watched his son develop and train with a sense of overwhelming pride for two years, until he was a full fledged member of the Army of the Duke, where he served faithfully until one day when the Empire attacked his hometown. Bernard winced as he remembered.

The town...it was already burning... He had been asleep when the warning bells had sounded in the church tower, and had assumed it was only a drill until he saw the tower on fire. Running out of his room, he'd seen his father turning the corner towards the center of town, barking out orders to soldiers.

"Secure the water supply! Make sure they don't get to the armory! Move it!" Arcan yelled to his troops. They responded "Aye sir!" as they scurried about to perform their designated tasks. Bernard realized that he had to help, too. He quickly put on his armor, grabbed his axe, and tore out towards the streets. He remembered the flames licking at him, the intense heat. A sword-wielding grunt shrieked out a battle cry as he lunged, and his head was quickly separated from the rest of his body by Bernard's axe. The first person I ever had to kill.

More soldiers leapt out of the alleys, and more notches were added to Bernard's blade. A small child was crying for her parents as his house burned around her. Bernard peered in through a window and, seeing their motionless bodies, surmised that they wouldn't be answering her cries any time soon. Bernard scrambled toward the front of the house, hefted his axe, and hacked through the house's door, kicking it off its hinges. The flames stung his eyes as he called out for the child.

"I'm here to help!" he had cried. "Where are you?" He had to strain his ears to hear over the popping and crackling of the fire. "Where are you?" he shouted again, desperation in his voice. A wooden truss snapped and fell from the ceiling to the floor, sending up a shower of ash and sparks into Bernard's face. He threw his arms in front of him protectively as he pressed forward, stepping over the burning support. He yelled again, and this time heard a soft whimpering from inside a closet. He fumbled with the handle, which was hard to manipulate in his thick leather gloves, and managed to get it open. The girl was crouched there, with her knees brought up against her chest, sobbing. Bernard gently placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. "It's going to be alright. But you've got to be a good girl and hold onto me, okay?" The girl nodded, sniffled, and clung to Bernard as he dashed back through the house, dodging falling knickknacks and raging flames. Glowing embers swirled around him in the dark as he set the child down and tousled her blonde hair. He motioned towards an overturned fruit cart. "Hide under there until I get back, okay?" She nodded silently, understanding, then scrambled towards the cart. Bernard gripped his axe again and tore down the alleyway towards the center of town. When he reached the end of the alley, however, he saw a sight that made him freeze in horror.

His father, a normally peaceable man, was shaking with rage as he stared at the mysterious foe in front of him. Arcan's neck-length gray hair blew in the wind, his muscles tensed and ready underneath his armor. He choked his hands up on the haft of the axe as he stared at his foe.

He (she?) stood tall, impossibly tall amidst the smoke and the wind and the chaos. The figure's armor covered every inch of their body - it was sleek, streamlined, and pure white, shining with the glare of the burning town. The figure's head was covered by a fringed helmet with a full face mask, and there were two soulless slits where its eyes should have been. Two malicious-looking blades were embedded in the figure's gauntlets. Silently, whoever it was beckoned Arcan to come forward.

"FOR THE DUKE!" Arcan screamed as he lunged at the figure. The white soldier effortlessly leapt out of Arcan's path and landed in a crouch behind him. Arcan spun around in shock, only to be caught at the bottom of the sternum with a swift kick. He landed with a crunch on the stone pathway. Bernard watched in horror as the stranger raised his cruel blade above his head and brought it down in his father's direction, only to hit stone as Arcan rolled to his feet and caught the...thing?...in the jaw with a kangaroo kick. The white-clad foe staggered backwards and Arcan lunged at him once more, bashing the side of his helm in with the haft of his axe. As his opponent attempted to regain his feet, Arcan raised his axe for one final blow…

Bernard never forgave himself for what happened next. "Father!" he screamed. Arcan turned around to face his son. "Leave me here!" he screamed. "Evacu-" He never finished his sentence. The white-clad fighter leapt into the air. The image of his profile against the pale moonlight seared itself into Bernard's mind forever. In one swift, continuous motion, the armored figure swooped down and brought its wrist-blade across Arcan's throat. Arcan gurgled and fell over, his blood pooling in the dirt. The stranger's armor, once pure white, was now splashed with red. He turned his back towards his defeated foe and his grieving son and began to walk away.

Bernard screamed with fury as he ran at his father's murderer, taking him down at the legs with a shoulder block. As the stranger tried to roll to his feet, Bernard attempted to bring the axe down upon him. As he brought it down one last time, he embedded it in the ground. As he struggled to free it, the stranger kneed him in the jaw and swiped at him with a blade, leaving a long gouge on Bernard's right cheek. Bernard felt a swift kick to his knee and toppled into the dirt as his legs buckled beneath him. There was a whoosh of air and the blade on the figure's wrist was pointed at his forehead. Then he heard the stranger's voice. Mocking. Condescending. It haunted him to this very day.

"Nice try, boy," the voice said. Bernard swallowed hard as the blade slowly lowered to point at his throat. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable result. It never came. Bernard heard the sound of running footsteps and another voice yelling to his attacker. "Reinforcements are coming, sir!" Bernard opened his eyes and watched the stranger bark back, "All right! It's a full retreat! What we're after isn't here – let's get out while we still can!" Bernard heard the messenger run off, then opened his eyes. He watched the white-clad warrior, the one who was wearing his father's blood, move the dagger away from his throat. "You got off easy this time, boy. But mark me, you will not be lucky twice." With that, he soundlessly leapt to a rooftop and was gone. Bernard pulled himself to his father's side, felt for a pulse, found none. He cried into his father's chest as the town burned around him, the embers becoming lost against the stars in the sky.

Yes…that's when I joined the rebellion. No random mercenary could fight like that – he had to have been Imperial. The Empire will pay. I will do the same thing to that butcher that he did to my father! He sighed, thought about Jarod and the others. That is, if I don't kill them first.

Luckily, the pemdas were accustomed to travelling in the forest and dodged the overhanging vines and branches without incident. Gasopi clung to his beast, his arms wrapped around its smooth, scaled skin with its very fine hairs. I hate riding this thing. Hate. Rosalyn shrieked with delight as she navigated through the undergrowth. Cirso was probably asleep, as he hadn't complained for the past hour.

"What does an Adoricon nest even look like?" Rosalyn yelled.

"A lot like a little hole leading into the ground." Gasopi yelled back.

"Like that?" Rosalyn pointed at a hole dug into the earth.

"A lot like that, yeah." Gasopi reined in his pemda and tied its bridle to a tree. It stretched out its elongated neck and scratched at the back of its ear with one of its two massive clawed feet. Rosalyn tied her beast down as well, woke up Cirso, and the three approached the hole. "We should be able to get in there all right," Gasopi said. "But who goes first?" asked Rosalyn.

They both looked at Cirso. "If you think I'm playing point man for you two lunkheads, you've got another thing coooOOOOoooomi-" They had pushed Cirso down the hole before he could finish his statement. They listened and heard a whump, after which Rosalyn yelled down to him. "You all right?"

"I hate you people," Cirso yelled back.

"Is it safe to come down?"

"There's no danger from the hole. I, however, cannot promise anything."

"Good enough," Gasopi said. "Down we go."

"Right!" Rosalyn said. Neither moved.

"Well, ladies first."

"No, no, I insist, you go on ahead." They stayed still.

"One of us has to go."

"Well, women are braver creatures than men…" Gasopi said lamely.

"Are you telling me that a big mighty manly man is too afraid to go down a hole where some adorable creatures might lick his face and dance around a little?"

"Not as such, but-"

Cirso scoffed loud enough for them to hear. "For crying out...ner met tran tyl aran!" Gasopi and Rosalyn felt their bodies pulled by an unseen force and were yanked down the hole. They landed with a dull thud on top of each other. Cirso dusted off his hands, which was a symbolic gesture – the robe covered those, too. Rosalyn and Gasopi looked at each other, then got up as quickly as they could and dusted themselves off. Cirso chuckled. "Well, now that you two have had your fun, let's go skin us some adorable little imps, shall we?" He wandered off down a tunnel. Gasopi turned to Rosalyn.

"I forgot he could use magic."

"Me too."

Rosalyn reached into her bag and produced a torch, then produced a match. She lit the torch, and she and Gasopi followed Cirso down the tunnel, illuminated by the dim light, their footsteps barely audible in the hard-packed dirt.

Eliza skipped along with her arm in Jarod's. He looks amazing out here in the woods. Has that whole rugged quality about him. She giggled. Jarod stared straight ahead, concentrating on breathing, a task he had always found deceptively complicated. Tia walked ahead of them, scouting and making sure her backside was in Jarod's line of sight as she did so. Eliza scowled, but then shrieked with glee a few minutes later.

"Look!" She yelled. "It's a hole in the ground!"

Jarod stared at the hole. "Yes."

Tia came back and looked at it. "Looks like some kind of nest." Eliza giggled again.

"I bet there's something fuzzy and cute in there! It looks like a nest for fuzzy cute things. Let's go in, Jarod!" She jumped into the hole. Jarod shrugged and went in after, shortly followed by Tia. They all landed in a very suggestive position that, for the sake of decency, will not be described here, but suffice to say that everyone would have been a winner. After a brief moment, they stood up and dusted themselves off.

"I bet the fuzzy things are this way!" Eliza yelled. Jarod could have thought, as the leader, that this was a ridiculous, dangerous idea. He could have thought that it would have been best not to enter the hole in the first place and tried to figure a way out of it. He could have. Instead, he was thinking about bagels. They went down the tunnel.

The tunnel walls were solidly compacted dirt. Boring, ordinary dirt. What little light came into the otherwise darkened tunnels was presumably from a crack in the surface that the sun shone through. Gasopi looked around him – it was strange. The Adoricons were supposed to be tiny little creatures. These tunnels had to have been dug by something larger – he felt small in the center of them. He wondered how Cirso felt. Cirso, of course, was muttering about some perceived injustice of the worst kind – the kind against him – and didn't really care about the size of the tunnels. He was muttering just quietly enough so that his companions could barely hear, only picking up a few loosely associated words, words like "chuckleheads" and "damn stupid hole".

"What's that up ahead?" Rosalyn asked. "It looks like a branch in the tunnel." She moved ahead of Gasopi and Cirso to take a closer look, peering around the end. A faint, almost gentle smell of animals wafted through the air. At the end of the passage, there was a light. "Maybe that's the den?" She led Gasopi and Cirso towards the light. Rosalyn and Gasopi inhaled sharply as they entered the light and saw what lay beyond it.

A miniature waterfall gently gushed from the top of the ceiling, and through a crack in the surface, an ethereal rainbow spilled down into the pond that the waterfall flowed into. Green grass, soft green grass, covered the floor of the den. The creatures' enormous eyes shone brightly as they made little yelping, lilting sounds. One of them playfully batted another on its tiny black nose, then slid down the tiny hill into the pond on its pudgy belly.

"Are those the Adoricons?" Cirso asked.

"I think so." Gasopi confirmed. He and Rosalyn began to walk down into the den. Cirso stayed behind – as a practitioner of the occult, he found he had a mild allergy to anything overly cute and bright.

Rosalyn was quiet. "They're adorable!"

"They sure are." Gasopi reached for his scythe, thought better of it, and then withdrew a travelling knife of medium length. There was one sleeping sitting up next to a small ridge, its head drooped down over its belly and its tiny arms cuddled in close. Gasopi crouched down, taking advantage of the concealment the ridge offered, and balanced his knife in his hand, started to swing back-

Rosalyn grabbed his wrist. "What are you doing?!" she hissed.

"What we were sent here to do!" he hissed back.

"But look at it! It's sleeping! And it's cute!"

"What's your point?"

"You can't do this!"

"What do you mean, I can't? Sure I can! Watch!" He broke his wrist free of Rosalyn's iron grip and brought the knife back. Rosalyn grabbed his arm again. "Let go!" Gasopi whispered through clenched teeth. "No." Rosalyn said, flatly and quietly. Gasopi struggled with Rosalyn, shifting his weight, sending them both down to the floor. They rolled around on the ground, both attempting to keep the knife away from the other. At this precise moment, Cirso wandered in, wondering why it was taking his companions so long to kill something with all the natural defenses of a wheel of cheese, saw Gasopi and Rosalyn rolling around in the dirt, their hair tousled and clothes dirty, and coughed. They stopped in mid-struggle and looked back at him. Cirso shook his head.

"I can't leave for two seconds without you two trying to get to second base, can I? Maybe I should just leave for another half a minute, it shouldn't take that long-"

"Shaddup!" Gasopi hissed at Cirso. "They'll hear us." The Adoricon Gasopi was aiming for was still very much asleep and completely oblivious to its surroundings. Cirso shrugged. "Whatever."

Gasopi pushed Rosalyn off of him and got to his feet, dusting his clothes off as he did so. "Look, if we don't kill the adorable little critters, we're going to be fed to that snake thing that lives in the castle's moat. Also, do I need to remind you about that smoke we saw coming from the center of the forest? Someone else is probably here. So if we just suck it up and skin those cute little things alive while they scream in pain, we'll be all set. Now, if you'll excuse me-" He took the knife back from Rosalyn, who hmphed and folded her arms in front of her. Sneaking back towards the ridge, he crouched, knife in hand, lining up his swing.

"They're so CUTE!" Eliza giggled. "Aren't they just the most precious things you've ever seen, Jarod?"

Jarod had picked up a rather shiny rock as they were walking through the tunnels, and his mind was entirely preoccupied with it, so he wasn't paying attention to Eliza's question. "Uh huh," he mumbled.

Tia squinted, saw Gasopi crouching with his knife. "What the hell is he doing with that thing?!" She saw him line up the blade, start to swing.

"STOP!" Eliza screamed and took off running, tripping over her dress as she did so. Tia thumbed her nose at Eliza as she and Jarod ran ahead. Eliza scowled and ran off after them.

"STOP!"

The suddenness of the voice made Gasopi drop his knife. It clattered to the ground. He peered over his shoulder and saw a scantily-clad girl with black hair, a girl in a long white dress, and a guy with slicked-forward hair that shone despite the relative absence of light running towards him. Cirso coughed.

"Uh, I think I figured out why that smoke was there."

Rosalyn was hopeful. "Maybe they're reinforcements?"

Gasopi looked at their clothes as they approached, saw no Imperial crest. "I don't think so…" His suspicions were confirmed as Jarod drew his broadsword. "Great." He grabbed his scythe. Jarod paused to give his ultimatum, as his self-imposed code of honor ¹ dictated.

"STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING RIGHT NOW!" Jarod yelled.

"WHY?" Cirso yelled back.

There was a noticeable pause in the conversation - he had never really had to answer that question before. "BECAUSE," he replied, and pointed his sword at Gasopi and his group. "AS NEW MOON SOLDIERS, WE ARE SWORN TO PROTECT THE DEFENSELESS WITH HONOR AND GRACE. DESIST, OR WE SHALL BE FORCED TO KILL YOU." Jarod coughed as he attempted to gasp for air.

"So much for an ultimatum," Rosalyn sighed. She began to rummage around in her bag. Cirso looked to Gasopi. "What do you suggest? We meet them, or we stand here like idiots?"

"We stand like idiots," Gasopi said, the calm tenor of command in his voice, even though inside he felt like wetting his pants.

Cirso nodded. "Idiots it is, then."

Jarod leapt into the air and brought his sword down on Gasopi in midair. Gasopi threw his scythe up and blocked the sword with its haft, knocking Jarod back. Jarod fell down and attempted to get to his feet, swiping with the blade again, the tip of the sword slashing through Gasopi's shirt and barely missing his skin. Gasopi brought the blade of the scythe in a deadly arc towards Jarod, who ducked at the last possible second, the blade swiping off a lock of his hair. The loss of the follicle sent Jarod into a blind rage, and he threw an elbow at Gasopi's head, connecting with his jaw. As Gasopi toppled down, he felt Jarod's blade pointed at his throat. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Rosalyn.

The dagger Tia held in her left hand stabbed at Rosalyn, who gracefully ducked and caught her opponent with an elbow to the stomach. Tia sputtered and coughed, staggering backwards. Rosalyn reached into her bag and withdrew a rather confused duck. Unsure what to do with it, Rosalyn simply shrugged and hurled it at Tia. The duck quacked and flew about wildly and Tia was momentarily blinded by the flurry of feathers. She fell backwards in an attempt to dodge the duck's pecks and swipes, which gave Rosalyn time enough to run to Gasopi's aid, sliding into Jarod's legs, knocking them out from under him. Jarod crumpled in a heap, and Gasopi kicked him in the head as he got up.

"Thanks," he said. She nodded. "Where's Cirso?"

Cirso was hiding behind a pile of rocks as Eliza waved her staff around, magical energy trailing behind it. I'm hosed, Cirso thought. Blondie's magic is making it difficult for me to draw any power for my own.² He moved his arms and muttered the words to make fire. To his shock, a small ball of flame appeared above him, but it quickly fizzled out from the imbalance between the forces.

"ANNOS LUCEK!" Eliza screamed, and a snow-white arc of energy exploded over Cirso's head and into the cave wall. At least she's not accurate. Cirso shivered. What did they teach us to do in this situation? Think, man, think!

"Where are you, you little bathrobe guy?" Eliza asked, carrying her staff in front of her with both hands. As she slowly walked to the area where Cirso was hunkered down, his training returned to his mind. Grabbing his own carven-wood staff, he swung back and smashed Eliza in the shins with it. That's what they taught us to do! As she buckled and fell over, howling in pain, Cirso hopped over the rock pile to join his companions, and the three assumed a defensive circle, back-to-back-to-back.

"Nice work."

"Thanks."

Jarod slowly got up, shaking the dust out of his head (Dust made up about ninety-two percent of it). He hefted his sword once more, in a perfect sword fighter's stance. Tia had managed to scare the duck away and was slowly advancing towards the group. Eliza hobbled towards them too, her staff raised in the air.

"This doesn't look good," Rosalyn said.

While all this was happening, the Adoricon that Gasopi was hunting woke up. With a peep, he rolled up to his feet and peered over the edge, his tiny paws scrabbling to get a better look. He saw the three strangers advancing on the other three strangers with their weapons, and was rather indignant about the whole thing. Stwangers, he thought. No stwangers 'lowed here.

He'd have to make that fact abundantly clear.

Rosalyn was the first to see the little creature over the ridge, and tried to use it to her advantage. "Look! He woke up!" she yelled, in a frantic attempt to draw their adversaries' attention away.

"Nice try, wench!" That was Tia. "But that's the oldest trick in the book!"

Rosalyn stared at the little creature. Something wasn't right. Maybe it was the fact that the creature was rapidly growing and was already eighteen times its previous size. Maybe it was the fact that the fluffy little fur was giving way to hardened, sinewy muscles, and razor-sharp bone spikes on the shoulders and joints. Perhaps it was that the big, adorable eyes were now becoming burning yellow ones with no pupils, set inward over a set of jagged, sharp teeth. She just couldn't quite put her finger on what unnerved her about the little guy.

"You…really…need to turn around…and see it…" she said, her voice shaking as she did so.

"Ha! I've told you once, you sucker-punching whore, that won't work! There's nothing to look at-"

Tia was cut off by an ear-piercing roar that shook the room around them. The three rebels turned around to look in horror at the beast, which gave the imperials a chance to run they gladly took. As they tore off down the tunnels and halls of the Adoricons' cave, the beast decided to chase after them. The ground shook as he did so, with the rhythmic stomping of his massive clawed feet. Cirso tripped and fell over his robe, Gasopi stopped to help him.

"Run, you idiot! He's right behind us!" Gasopi ignored him, threw the wizard over his shoulder, and took off running again just as the beast's jaws slammed shut behind them. "This way!" Rosalyn screamed as she pointed to another path. "I see the woods!" So they ran down that path. The beast followed them, and in one final attempt, lunged for the trio as they leapt out of the tunnel's exit. There was a pained roar as the gigantic thing got its head caught in said opening. They didn't hear it. The pounding of the pemdas' feet, and of their own hearts, drowned it out. They didn't look back until they were close to the castle gates.

"I guess they'll have to wait on those pelts, huh?" Cirso said.

His companions didn't say anything as they led the beasts of burden into the castle square to face Andryn with news of their failure. It wasn't a thought any of them relished.

"I must say, I am rather disappointed with you three. I expected more, frankly. You know what the Empire does to traitors and failures…" Andryn put his hand on the hilt of his sword, clenched it around the handle, then relaxed it and put the hand back at his side. "But…I'm prepared to give you another chance. When that chance will come, I do not know." Rosalyn relaxed slightly. Gasopi couldn't see how, he was more nervous than before. Cirso was probably asleep again – it was hard to tell underneath his shroud.

Andryn settled into his plush velvet chair and turned his gaze towards some maps on the surface of his desk. "I suggest you get some rest. You will be notified of reassignment. Dismissed." Gasopi, Cirso, and Rosalyn slunk out of the room, closing the door behind them gently.

"Yes…everyone deserves a second chance." Andryn grinned to himself.