Inch by Inch

Jay blinked fluid out of his vision. His eyelids batted the blood away, but it flowed unbothered down his cheek to pool at his jaw. His legs were shaky and there was a tightness in his chest that wasn’t entirely from all the exertion.

Ana was hunched down, panicking and making herself as small as possible. Her weapon lay in the dirt at her feet where she’d dropped it after the battle.

Kane remained the steadiest of them, crouching to inspect the oddity’s detached tail. He, too, was panting heavily, but his breaths were steady.

Everything was a mess. They were gods-know-where, in a small grove in the middle of a field far from home. This was meant to be a simple patrol. No oddity of this size should have reached this close to Lauchia. This shouldn’t have happened.

Jay needed to do something.

Anything.

“Kane. Are you hurt? Can you make it to Slow Keeping?”

Kane’s clothes were ruffled from the scramble through the woods, but his armor was clean and it didn’t look like he’d been touched. That was one benefit of always wearing rougher, training clothes. They were tougher. Kane didn’t look up from the stinger, but he did respond. “Hmm?”

“Are you hurt?”

The swordsman shook his head.

Jay took a breath. Doing something, even talking, was steadying him. “I need you to go to Slow Keeping. To Margaret. We need to tell them what happened. Can, can you do it?”

That made Kane look up. He blinked, eyes unfocused, at Jay. His head inched to turn back to the dead flesh. “I...”

“Kane,” Jay snapped, his control not as steady as he’d like. “Can you do it?”

Kane focused, eyes meeting Jay’s. His mouth twitched, mouth flattening for an instant before he flinched. “Yes. I can do it.”

“If you see anything, come back. Don’t risk it.”

Kane nodded his acceptance and drew his sword, just in case. As he began to trudge through the undergrowth, Jay turned to Ana.

“Ana, are you okay?” he asked, keeping his voice low and trying to fill it with a calmness he didn’t feel.

She murmured something, still taking shallow breaths.

“Ana...” He approached her folded form like he would a hissing cat. “I need to know if you got hurt.”

No response.

He kneeled down, knowing that his legs weren’t steady enough for a crouch or attempting to replicate Ana’s half squat.

At the movement, she looked up, meeting his eyes and the blood trailing down his cheek. She jerked back at the sight. The shift proved too much for her precarious seat on her ankles, and she fell backwards. Her arms unwound reflexively, but too late to prevent falling on her ass. Ana exhaled from the impact but made no other sound.

Jay took the opportunity to look her over. Ana’s clothes were torn, worse than Kane’s or his own seemed to be. Anywhere under her armor was unharmed, but the loose fabric around the edges had suffered, especially her sleeves, which were shredded. Her outfit had a lot of loose, billowy fabric. There was not much left. None of the cuts were bloody and none looked to be from the oddity. Her face was pale and drawn. She stared out at him, eyes wide and pupils dilated, but unfocused. Some of her hair had fallen out of her helmet and was strewn across her face and sticking out at odd angles.

She was okay, but also clearly not.

He didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t responding and was still taking those short, sharp breaths.

“Ana, can you stand?”

Her hand clawed at the fabric of her pants.

“Shit,” he cursed quietly, then winced. He looked at Ana with worry, afraid he’d made something worse.

No reaction.

“Okay, I’m-I’m going to help you up.” He reached forward and grabbed one of her hands. It was cold, clammy and shaking. She offered no resistance as he guided her to her feet. It didn’t seem to help.

“Are you breathing alright? Ana? Ana!”

No response.

Fuck. “I’m going to take off your helmet, alright?”

He was as gentle as he could, but some of her hair caught as he eased it off. The brief tugs of pain didn’t shake her out of it. Her brown hair splayed out at all angles now, and he attempted to press it down with a few movements before giving up.

He was running out of ideas, and his own heart rate was rising now. It was just the two of them now. What if Ana was sick? Maybe if he hadn’t sent Kane away, he would know what to do.

“Let’s just walk around. Yes. Walk around. Calm us. It’ll be good.”

They trudged a little circle, back and forth through the woods, carefully avoiding the oddity’s corpse as best they could. The minutes ticked down and Jay started to feel like his breath was becoming short to match Ana’s instead of the other way around. Ten minutes passed and color began to return to Ana’s face. Her steps grew steadier, and so did Jay’s. Eventually, she pulled her shaking hand away.

“I need to sit down.”

Jay let her go, letting out a slow exhalation. He tried to join her and wait, but found he couldn’t sit still. Instead, he gathered their weapons and rested them by that wide, stubby tree that the oddity failed to brush past. He then started flattening all the vegetation between the tree and the dead oddity. Not for any particular reason, more for something to do.

“Ana! Jay!”

The shout shook him from his efforts.

“Here Kane,” Ana shouted back, voice steady now. She was sitting calmly by her helmet, though her limbs trembled every now and again.

Jay stuck his head around the tree. Stomping through the undergrowth was his teammate, followed by Margaret, two men he didn’t know, and Romwell of all people. Margaret wore thick layers, a leather apron and carried a deadly-looking pitchfork as tall as she was. The two men, both farmers as well, were dressed similarly and carried other farming tools. Romwell was the strangest of the bunch, clad in full leather armor and wearing a protective helmet that covered his face and mouth but couldn’t stop some of his bushy hair from poking out.

Backup from Slow Keeping had arrived. Jay’s shoulders sagged in relief. His legs twinged, and he needed to rest a hand against the trunk to remain on his feet.

| i i i ¦ i i i | i i i ¦ i i i |

It turned out that the farmers from Slow Keeping had come with a cart. While Romwell looked Ana, Jay and Kane over — another surprise — Margaret and the two farmers bodily dragged the oddity’s corpse back through the grove. It was hard work, but the trio took to it with strength earned from decades of living and laboring between wild and Wonder. The two men made a few jokes about how the team hadn’t cut the oddity into smaller pieces, but their tone was friendly and respectful.

Jay didn’t know how he felt about the banter. On one hand, he wanted to shout about how he’d like to see them fight it, that this was serious and cutting it to size had been less important than being eaten. On the other, he recognized they were helping, that they’d come out worried about facing more oddities and prepared to do so and that the jokes were grateful. He just couldn’t fully shake the urge.

“Tilt your head back,” Romwell ordered, shaking his head to dislodge some of his hair from his sight. The old farmer had taken off his helmet once it became clear that there were no more oddities around, but his hair had yet to recover. If anything, it was more askew than Ana’s had been. She’d fixed hers while they waited without him noticing.

Jay tilted his head back on rote, but leaned away as Romwell pulled a thin bottle out of a bag strapped to the inside of his jacket. He hadn’t forgotten the smell from the man’s house, or the strange things in jars yet.

“It’s a strong alcohol,” Romwell scoffed. “Keep twitching if you want some scars.”

Jay found it in himself to stay very still, even as his eyes watered from the fumes from the bottle. When Romwell poured it, he couldn’t stop the hiss of pain as the right of his face lit up in pain from his hairline to cheek.

“Mostly skinned,” Romwell murmured as the liquid trickled down Jay’s jaw. “Clean it again when you get back to the city, and keep it clean. No touching.”

After a full health check, it turned out the scrape on his face from colliding with the tree was the worst of their injuries. Their appearance was the main casualty, their clothes looking like they’d fallen into a pit of knives.

With the oddity stowed on the cart, it was time to leave. The team and their backup from Slow Keeping retreated first to the collection of farmhouses and then back to the city walls. One farmer disappeared as they passed through the pseudo-village, which was locked up tight with spotters on the roofs. The other, along with Margaret and Romwell, continued on to the city.

Their arrival at the gates caused a stir. The guards wasted no time letting them in, but unlike their lazy reaction to the knob corpses, they also sent several runners away into the city. The knacker who usually approached them as soon as they arrived hung back too.

Ana, Kane and he were a little lost with the response, as was Margaret, but Romwell took it in his stride. Thankfully, the guards provided them with seats out of the sun to rest, and they didn’t have to wait long. The first runner returned with a man wearing thick, waxy robes made of a fabric that glistened in the light. A short minute later, a raven haired woman in armor sporting the guard’s symbol arrived.

Kane shifted in his seat, straightening up. The two introduced themselves, names that faded from Jay’s mind like smoke in the wind to his chagrin.

The man, a tall frowning man with a terrible scar across his jaw, was from the Alchemist’s guild. He wanted to know about the oddity, how it fought, what it did. The woman was an officer in the guards, and more cheerful though her questions were just as prying. She and the guard organization were more interested in the where and how many. The interrogation lasted longer than it felt it should have, but was over before Jay could really notice.

What Jay did note was the light pouch of coins pressed into his hands by the alchemist and the hurried explanation that accompanied it. The oddity they’d fought, the ‘tailmouth’ as Jay was thinking of it, was a new, never seen before Oddity in Lauchia. No one knew anything about it. As such, no knacker would touch it for fear of poisoning themselves or others.

That’s where the alchemist guild came in. They would buy the corpse — for practically nothing — and maybe experiment with it if the oddity had interesting properties, or hand it to an apprentice if it didn’t. If they discovered anything, which was unlikely, then any other corpses of the same kind of Oddity, unlikely to exist unless it was a swarm or a creature that could reproduce, would earn Jay’s team a small sum. A first retrieval reward or bounty, as it were.

What the explanation boiled down to was: We’re taking the body. You get ten bronze. On the very rare chance that it’s both useful and prolific, you get more money.

It was the same amount they got for selling a knob. That felt so wrong.

The guard captain disappeared to organize a sortie out to search for more of the tailmouths. Thankfully, none of them were invited. She made it very clear that the time for adventurers was over and seemed quite enraged, though not at his team.

Then they were left alone, and Jay sat with his team. All three of them were battered, tired and... so close to being done.

“Why don’t you two head back to the dorms and grab some food for all of us on the way?”

“What about you?” Ana asked as Kane began nodding, slowly at first, then gaining speed. Ana’s shoulders were slumped, and her posture nonexistent as she molded to the chair.

Jay jerked his thumb at the small contingent from Slow Keeping, who’d had an interrogation of their own, and then at the city. “I’ll thank them and make sure they’re sorted and then head to the bureau to report.”

Ana lost interest quickly.

He tossed the light pouch at her lap, and she made a half-hearted effort to keep it from falling away. “Something good and filling.”

The thought of food, as well as the ability to choose it, perked her up. His two teammates disappeared into the city, leaving Jay alone. He closed his eyes for one brief moment to gather himself before standing and heading over to the group from Slow Keeping.

| i i i ¦ i i i | i i i ¦ i i i |

The door closed behind him, and Jay walked into their room with numb legs. Water dripped from his damp hair and the sore patch on his right face that he dared not touch with cloth. He’d carefully cleaned it, following Romwell’s instructions, after washing up.

It wasn’t that he trusted the old farmer, but that his orders seemed sensible, and Jay was a little worried. He hoped it wouldn’t scar. Old battle wounds, hints of injuries and claw marks were all symbols of an adventurer. Jay held no disillusion that it was only a matter of time before he received his fair share. He knew they’d gotten lucky this fight, and that a single scrape was nothing. His face barely pained him at all. It was just... if he was going to get a scar, he’d rather he got it from an oddity instead of a tree.

A prominent scar on his face would provoke questions, and answering them with tales of his collision with a stout tree was a prospect he dreaded. If he was going to scar, better it be from the tailmouth’s hundreds of teeth. Trunkbane, treefall or barkface were not names he wished upon anyone.

Neither of his team offered a greeting as he entered. Dinner had been a silent affair, and some of that solemnity lingered even now. They were all too tired to try and change the atmosphere.

Kane lay in his bed, not staring with unfocused eyes like usual, but resting with his eyes shut and covered. Ana was curled up on her bed, knees up to her chest as she fiddled with fabric of some kind. Her curtain had not been drawn across the room yet.

Jay had made it to his own bed, and the pile of discarded clothes before he realized what it was Ana was doing.

“Are you repairing your clothes?”

The words sliced through the ties weighing down the atmosphere of the room. Jay didn’t know how, though it was him that had spoken them. Perhaps it was the curiosity in his voice, the surprise.

Ana chewed on her upper lip for a second before answering. “Yes. The thorns attacked them, but the tears are small and the outfit is salvageable.” She sighed, holding what looked like a blouse out before folding it again. “Only good for adventuring and armor lining, but salvageable.”

“Ah.” Jay inspected his own clothes lying in a heap. The rush through the forest had done a number on them. It was one thing for an adventurer to wear equipment showing signs of a fight, and another to look tattered. The difference between pride and shame even.

He had not bought that many outfits, and new clothes were expensive...

“Have you a spare needle?”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”

He gestured at his small heap on the floor.

She shook her head. “I don’t have thread in that color.”

“Does that matter?”

Kane chuckled, and Jay shot him a glare.

“I’ll only be using them for adventuring, like you said.” Maybe for training too. It depended on how poorly they turned out.

Ana started tapping a needle between her fingers. “I have a hunter green that might work for your trousers. I’m entirely out of brown for the shirt, you’d have to settle with an ocher.”

“An ocher?” Jay whispered. He didn’t get the pronunciation right, saying ‘oh-share‘ instead of Ana’s ‘oaker‘. His tongue seemed to struggle with the word in the same way his brain did. What was that? What was it?

Ana untangled herself, sliding off the bed to pull one of her bags out and dig into it. “I’ve been using a back stitch for mine, but the colors won’t work for you. You’ll have to use ladder where you can.”

He blinked and squinted at her half mended top. What did that mean?

What had he gotten himself into?

Kane laughed silently at Jay from his bed, looking entirely too amused.

“Ana,” Jay began, realizing that they’d all been in that thicket. “Have you got anything for Kane?”

Kane’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He sat up. “No! That won’t be needed, I know how to-“ He trailed off, looking past Ana at the wall. Kane didn’t say anything further for a few breaths. “Actually, yes. Have you anything?”

Jay shot him a betrayed look. That was not how this was meant to go. Kane was meant to be the sacrifice to draw attention away, not the willing conspirator.

But it was too late. Ana began rattling off colors, random objects, and jumbled up letters. There was no escape.

Minutes later, he found himself sitting down and sewing with his own adventuring team.