The night never fully settled.
It only thinned and thickened in waves — pine tree breath, water breath, the faint metallic bite that wouldn’t leave the back of Amia’s throat. She lay with one arm folded under her head and the other hand resting close to her katana, eyes half-lidded like sleep, nose working like a hunting dog’s.
They were there.
Not close enough to touch. But close enough to intend.
They had watched the fire die. They had listened for soft talking. They had waited for Artemis to drift from her, for Amia to curl into herself. They had waited for the human part.
Amia didn’t give them any.
Artemis stood where the darkness was deepest, awake before Amia fully was. When she moved, it was only a change in pressure — a shoulder turning, a foot placed where it hadn’t been. No wasted shifts.
A twig snapped somewhere to the left. Soft, deliberate.
Then another, farther back. Trying to make Amia turn her head the wrong way.
Amia breathed in through her nose and tasted cheap spirits under damp wool. Oiled leather. Metal that had been handled too often — brittle from both overuse and unnecessary sharpening. One of them had eaten onions — the smell was sharp even at a distance.
Six.
Two lying low. One climbing to get height. Three circling.
She didn’t open her eyes fully. Didn’t sit up. She only let her fingers flex once on the ground.
Artemis angled her head a fraction.
Amia mouthed it without sound.
“Six.”
Artemis mouthed back, almost invisible.
“Now?”
Amia turned her head towards the sunrise and let the morning answer.
The sky paled to a thin, bruised grey behind the treeline. The water beside them changed color, from black to iron, from iron to dull glass. In that in-between — when the world wasn’t night, day neither — the bandits finally decided it was safe to become brave.
A cough, forced and theatrical, came from the trees.
“Hey—” a man’s voice called, hoarse with false exhaustion. “You there. Travellers. We—”
His words were half eaten by the sound of boots sliding through wet leaves.
Amia’s eyes opened.
Two figures came forward with hands raised, bundles on their shoulders, heads bowed like penitents. Behind them, the others moved wider — one to the right, one to the loose rocks by the waterline, one staying back with a bow held low, trying to keep it hidden in the fog of dawn.
Amia sat up slowly, as if she’d been woken by kindness.
Artemis was already nearer than she’d been a breath ago, positioned so her shadow covered Amia’s flank. The long blade in her hand didn’t reflect light; it drank it.
The man in front — thin cheeks, practiced grief — smiled too quickly.
“Please,” he said. “We’ve been walking all night. We’re starving. Just— water. Food. Anything.”
Amia’s gaze went to his hands. Clean nails. Too clean for a refugee. The skin between thumb and forefinger was thickened — rope work, blade work. And under the sour soap scent was old blood that had been washed, not forgotten.
He took one step closer.
Amia didn’t shift back.
Artemis did — one half step to the side, closing an angle. A quiet wall.
The bandit’s eyes flicked to Artemis’ weapon and back. He licked his lips.
Amia tilted her head as if considering mercy.
She breathed in.
Fear. Excitement. The tremor of a plan about to become action.
“Water,” Amia repeated, voice flat.
“Please,” the man said again, and his tone changed — barely. A hook under the word. He glanced down at her bare thigh where cloth had shifted, and his eyes warmed with the wrong kind of confidence.
Amia watched him watch her.
She let him.
Then she leaned forward and picked up a piece of pinewood, turning it in her fingers like she was a child idly playing.
Behind the man, the one at the waterline shifted, trying to get behind Artemis. The bowman in the back raised his weapon a fraction, thinking the pale light would hide the motion.
Amia’s nose caught the bow’s string wax and the breath of the man holding it — tight, sharp, already anticipating the scream. The familiar smell of the burst of excitement that usually comes before the first shot at a hunt.
Her fingers stopped turning the wood.
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Artemis said one word, barely above breath.
“Left.”
Amia’s answer was a blink.
The man in front smiled wider, mistaking stillness for consent.
He stepped in.
The subtle smell of steel was slightly thicker near his wrist. Trapped there, like it had nowhere else to go.
A blade came out of his sleeve, flashing dirty steel toward Amia’s ribs.
Amia moved.
Not back.
Into him.
Her hand snapped up, catching his wrist before the knife could find flesh. Her other hand drove the driftwood into the soft place under his jaw with a brutal, precise shove.
His teeth clacked. His eyes bulged.
She let him feel that pressure for exactly one heartbeat — long enough for panic to bloom — then she twisted his wrist until the bone gave with a wet, ugly sound.
The knife dropped into the earth.
He screamed, and the scream didn’t get far.
Artemis was already moving, and when she moved the whole scene tilted. She didn’t chase — she closed. One of the circlers tried to rush past her toward Amia with a club held high.
Artemis stepped in, not away, and struck the man’s forearm with the flat of her blade.
It was not a cut.
It was a break.
The club fell. The man fell with it, howling, clutching an arm that no longer remembered how to be straight.
The bandit at the waterline hesitated — just a hesitation, just a thought of wrong — and that was all Artemis needed.
She caught his collar with one hand and threw him into the shallows like he was a sack of wet clothes.
He hit the water hard, gasping, scrambling, losing dignity and traction all at once. The current wasn’t strong, but it didn’t need to be. It only needed to make him flail.
The bowman loosed.
Amia heard the arrow before it sang. Smelled the bitter resin on the fletching. She turned her head and the arrow passed close enough to kiss her hair, close enough that she felt the air move.
Artemis’ blade snapped up, not to block, but to mark the bowman’s line.
Amia’s eyes locked onto the source.
The bowman tried to nock again, hands shaking now that the story had changed.
Amia drew her katana in one smooth line. The sound was clean.
The bowman froze.
Because the white-haired girl was already halfway to him.
She crossed the earth between them like the arrow that had loosened before.
He panicked and fired too early. The arrow went wide.
Amia didn’t even look at it.
She struck low, not to kill, but to ruin — the katana’s edge flicking across his thigh in a shallow cut that opened fast and bright, blood spilling in a sudden sheet.
He dropped, screaming, hands clawing at the wound, trying to press it closed, trying to understand how a cut that small could take his legs away.
Amia stood over him, blade held loose at her side.
She didn’t breathe hard. She didn’t smile.
She leaned down until he could see her cyan eyes clearly in the growing light.
“Run,” she said, quiet and sharp like a knife sliding back into a sheath.
He couldn’t.
He tried.
He crawled instead.
Behind her, the leader with the broken wrist was on his knees, retching, cradling his arm like it was a child that had died.
Two of the remaining bandits were already backing away, eyes wide, hands raised — too late for performance now. Their “traveler bundles” lay abandoned, revealing rope, spare blades, and a pouch that clinked.
Artemis stood between them and Amia, tall and silent, her presence so solid it felt like the air had learned fear.
One bandit found his voice. “We— we didn’t know—”
Amia turned her head, just enough.
“Yes, you did,” she said.
The bandit’s courage snapped.
He grabbed the wounded bowman under the arms and hauled, slipping in blood, swearing, crying, trying to drag him into the treeline. Another scrambled to help. They moved clumsily, like animals in a trap.
Amia didn’t chase.
She didn’t need to.
Artemis stepped forward once, blade angled down. The movement alone made the last two stagger back.
Artemis spoke, one word that carried weight like stone.
“Leave.”
They left.
They left stumbling, dragging, half-carrying their ruined men, heads ducked like they feared the trees would judge them too. They left supplies. They left the lie behind. They left their pride between the loose rocks by the water.
Someone is still breathing, choking, crawling, or being dragged while swearing.
The morning accepted their retreat without comment.
Only when their smells thinned into the wind did Amia let herself breathe out.
Her nostrils flared once. The metallic taste of blood was fresh now, a bright ribbon in the air.
Artemis came to her side with a careful step, like approaching a cornered animal she loved.
“Are you hurt?” Artemis asked.
Amia looked down at herself, as if checking out of habit.
“No.” A pause. “Just moved too fast.”
Her fingers hovered over the dark red mark beneath her bra — warm, throbbing with the rush.
Then, because it mattered now in a way it hadn’t before.
“I’ll be fine, it’s healing,” Amia added, and her voice softened.
Artemis’ gaze stayed on her face, watchful.
Amia didn’t wipe her blade, there was no need— the cut at the man’s leg was so quick and precise that no blood anchored itself to the steel — she sheathed the katana slowly, methodical as her breath.
She glanced at the abandoned bundles, the dropped rope, the food that could keep them another day without moving.
She glanced at the water.
They’d fought in the liminal hour. The world was awake now. Trails would be clearer. Birds would notice. People would talk.
Amia refastened her belt and stepped to the stream’s edge.
She knelt and washed her hands. The water took the blood in thin red threads, carrying it away as if that’s where it’s meant to belong.
Artemis stood behind her, close enough that Amia felt the heat of her body without being touched.
Amia looked up at the pale sky through branches.
“We stay,” she said. “Just for a little bit longer.”
Artemis didn’t question it. She only nodded once.
“Yes, Master.”
And as the sun began to climb, the forest held its breath — not in fear of bandits, but in anticipation of what stories men would tell when they limped home bleeding and ashamed.
Artemis remained behind her as she washes her hands, close enough that Amia can feel warmth through air alone.
Amia doesn’t tell her to step back.
The water runs, and for the first time in a long time, Amia lets herself stay still.
Was that fight scene brutal enough for you?
