Kaita scoffed. “You worry for my safety? It is our enemies who should be worried.”
Rogan sighed. “Then you may have your vengeance.”
Now, on that same night, near the Dorsean town of Lan Shui west of the Greatrocks, a dark evening had come.
A woman named Zhanu lived on a farm just a few spans beyond the walls of Lan Shui. Zhanu was a veteran of the Dorsean army and had fought in the king’s wars. Then, one day, she had retired with much honor and a gift of the king’s gold, and she had settled near the town where she had been born. In the years since, she had taken a wife named Shu, who had died old and happy, and had mothered three children, all of whom had grown and left Lan Shui to live their own lives elsewhere. Now Zhanu lived alone on her farm, working the land each day and visiting the town’s taverns each night.
Except that recently, she had not been visiting the taverns. Like everyone who dwelled outside the town’s walls, she had been spending her nights locked up in her own home, a weapon near at hand.
Zhanu stumped about her house, ensuring the windows were closed and shuttered and the front door was tightly secured. She grumbled as she fidgeted with the lock. It was new, having been added only a few days ago by a blacksmith from Lan Shui. Never in her life had Zhanu felt the need for a lock on her door. Lan Shui had never been that sort of town.
“All the nine lands going to darkness,” she muttered. Zhanu had taken to talking to herself sometime in the last few years, and though she despised the habit, she could not seem to break it.
A single candle burned in the main room of her house. Zhanu lifted it and brought it into her bedroom, the only other room in the house, and nothing very grand. She had never felt the need for fancy lodgings—truthfully, even two rooms in her house seemed a bit grandiose to her. But her wife had insisted.
Zhanu set the candle on her bedside table, stripped down to her underclothes, and crawled beneath her thick blanket. It had been a long day in the fields, and she looked forward to a good night’s rest. She snuffed out the candle and closed her eyes.
Not quite an hour later, they snapped open as something scratched on her roof.
Skritch, skritch.
She lay perfectly still in her bed, her whole body tense, waiting.
Skritch, skritch.
The sound had moved. Whatever was making the scratching, it was moving from the rear of the house towards the front.
Come for me, have you? thought Zhanu. Well, you will find no frail old victim here.
Zhanu slid from her bed, moving as quietly as possible. She lifted her sword from its place on the wall, trying to remain as silent as she could, and crept into the house’s front room.
Skritch.
The scratching sound came again, but this time it seemed to cut itself off abruptly. Zhanu paused a step away from the door, listening.
There came a soft thump, like something landing on the ground outside. Whatever was making the noise had leaped down from the roof.
Zhanu stole to the wall just beside the door. She gripped her sword in both hands, holding it ready to swing.
All was silent for a long moment.
KROOM
The window behind Zhanu exploded inwards, showering the room with splinters.
With an old soldier’s instincts, she whirled and stabbed out with her sword. There was a sharp shunk as it slid deep into flesh.
Zhanu froze, staring at her intruder in horror.
The creature would have been as tall as she was if it stood upright, but it was hunched over on all fours. Its skin was pallid white, mottled with light grey, and it wore no clothing at all. Its long, thick limbs ended in claws as long as her hands, and its wide, red mouth was rimmed with sharp teeth designed for ripping and tearing into flesh. It had long, pointed ears, like an Elf’s.
Zhanu had buried her sword in its chest halfway to the hilt. Her thrust had been pure reflex. Yet the creature stared at her, and its yellowing eyes were filled with hate, not pain.
“What in the dark—”
Zhanu’s words cut off as the creature struck her a heavy backhanded blow. She flew through the air before crashing hard into the wooden floor. Nothing broke, but she bit her own tongue hard enough that she tasted blood.
She pushed herself up on her elbows just in time to see the creature seize the sword by the hilt and drag it out of its own flesh. It hissed with discomfort, but the wound did not seem to slow it at all. And as Zhanu watched, the skin and the flesh beneath began to stitch together, until soon there was no sign there had been a wound there at all.
The creature threw the sword past Zhanu. The steel sank into the wall and stuck there, quivering. Zhanu tried to push herself away, but the creature stalked towards her on all fours, its shredded ears twitching, a rasping hiss sounding from its throat.
“Dark take you,” said Zhanu. “Shu is waiting for me anyways.”
She spat, and the bloody spittle struck the floor just in front of the creature. It stopped in its advance for only a moment, stooping to lick up the spit.
A hungry gleam came into its eyes. It leaped for her, and Zhanu knew nothing more.
Constable Yue of the family Baolan was summoned to Zhanu’s farm the next day.
One of her neighbors had not seen her in the fields that morning and had gone to investigate. Once he had seen the horror inside her house, he had run
