Stan woke up wet and cold, an angry face hovering over him. The last remnants of a vivid dream were already dissolving. All he could recall of it was being shaken to death by some great giant.

"Wha...argh...the meh?"

Min's face flattened. "It's raining."

He sat up and rubbed his eyes before looking around. The fire had burnt to ash, still contained in the crystal he'd formed around it. Over it, a cloak hung, slowly dripping water onto the ground.

As a precaution, he'd erected another umbrella above them, covering most of the glade. The rain pounded down on it, sheeting off the sides. It should have been enough, but the ground wasn't as level as he'd thought, and the glade had flooded.

"Oh."

"This cannot continue," she said, as though finalizing an argument.

"Why…ugh," he pushed himself into a cross-legged sit. "You're still here?"

"Of course, I'm still here. Where would I go?"

Stan dug his knuckles into his eyes. Honestly, he'd half expected her to have run away in the night. Or perhaps he was confusing expectation for hope. Her presence irritated him in a vague way he couldn't pin down. He was supposed to be on the run, alone. Why? No idea, but she intruded on it.

He pushed himself to his feet, groaning at stiff muscles and joints. A wet and muddy cloak pulled at his neck. He unclasped it and wrung it out, grimacing. Whatever water-proofing it may have once had washed away.

"I'm hungry," Min Li said, arms crossed with a put-out look.

Bah, it was barely the second day. He’d normally go the first few days before even trying to find food.

His stomach growled its betrayal at that thought. A scowl sketched his face a moment as he recalled just how much he hated being hungry. Discomfort aside, it made the very act of creating crystal harder.

Distraction was the best cure, at least until it wasn't. But that was still a day or two out.

The fire pit needed fixing. He separated the top from the fire pit and sent it to Min, carrying her cloak. She took it with a flat expression. The rest he allowed to dissolve, dropping ash on the forest floor.

"Are you listening to me?"

He was not. In fact, he was actively ignoring her, which was better than not listening in his opinion.

A dozen crystal blades formed in the air at an angle, forming two circles above the ash. The blades began rotating in opposite directions and then dove into the ground, tilling the ash into the mud until it disappeared.

The blades dissolved, and a set of rakes formed in their place. They pulled leaves over the area until it mostly blended in with the rest of the forest. Mostly. He hadn't yet figured out how to cover his tracks perfectly, no matter his talents, but this was the best he could do.

Min stared at the display with a curious expression, then sighed in disappointment. Not that he could blame her.

"We need provisions; we need travel clothes; we need—where are you going!?"

He paused at the edge of the glade.

"This way," he said without turning, and then walked into the forest.

The first time Stan had run, it had taken him eight days to find food, a small fox he'd killed easily and then eaten raw.

The aftermath of that ranked as one of the worst moments in his life.

The second time, it only took him six days to find food, and then several hours to cook it. The third time it was five days.

This time? He aimed for three days. He was getting better at running. It was quite an accomplishment.

Perhaps. He didn't really know. There was a dichotomy in his life, almost as though he'd been split in two. There was the 'him' that danced and flipped and spun through the air. The 'him' that laughed, soaking up the crowd's adulation. The 'him' that sought beauty above all.

And there was the 'him' on the run. Desperate, cutting out every shred of useless baggage. Scrounging for food, always on the run. Learning hard lessons the hard way. Scared. Driven. Savage. Yet, austere. Its own kind of beauty.

It was the him that spun impossible shapes in the air. The him without the weight of the world pressing down on him. It was the him that didn’t seek to show the world beauty, for he had no need. It was the him that could simply…be.

Two people for two very different situations. They had never met each other, almost like one died when the other was born that moment he crossed a threshold. Like those old children stories of a man turned bear in the darkest of night when Ionia hid.

Why did the bear always go on a rampage? A plot hole he never could figure out.

Regardless, he was becoming better at being the bear. The hunter. The survivor.

He doubted Min would appreciate the growth.

The woman appeared at his side as though his thoughts summoned her, fuming silently as he picked his way around puddles and formed citrine bridges over small streams that had sprouted in the rain.

"Aren't you hungry?"

He was, obviously. It'd been over a day since he'd eaten. If anything, he was probably hungrier than she was—forming so much crystal used a lot of energy. But slowing down to find food now? Suicide. They still needed more distance.

So he kept walking, and he said nothing because he didn't want to explain himself. And, if he were honest, he half hoped she would get frustrated enough to leave.

"If we could just find a small town," she said an hour later, her tone forced into conciliation, "we'll be in and out, just enough to buy a few things we need to survive."

Assuming one survived the town. He had doubts.

Also, she was emphasizing her words again. It was, he realized, a sign of frustration. The words she emphasized changed depending on what she wanted to accomplish. At least, he thought so.

No, but she was wrong. It was remarkable just how little he could survive on. He knew this because he'd done it. Not that it was pleasant, but it was doable. And surviving on very little was always preferred to dying from carelessness.

"I'll go, alone. You don't even need to risk it." Desperation tinged her tone. "You just need to wait for me."

Alone. You. Just. It was almost like a code.

And no. Wait for her to bring the Inquisitors down on him? Hard pass.

He firmed his face, stomping forward with enough determination to cause her to fall a step or two behind.

He continued walking until the ground began to incline steeply. Small streams of water had formed in the rain, making the ground slick and unstable.

"Think about it. We're walking the forest in tights. Tights of all things. They won't last long."

Just one word, but double emphasized. Try as he might, he couldn't figure out why she'd emphasized it. Maybe she hated tights more than he thought?

Although, they were quite horrible against the cold. And the rain.

But he had solutions to both, so he wasn't concerned.

Yet.

He formed a citrine staircase—gods, but he really love that adjective—and walked up the incline, leaving just enough of it behind him for Min to keep up. It took over an hour for the incline to level out, leaving him light-headed from the effort.

"Even I can see you're tiring out. You can't sustain this for much longer."

Was she gloating? He couldn't tell, but the tone in her voice carried triumph, as though she thought the world itself affirmed her words.

Besides, she would be surprised at just how much he could sustain. He certainly had been, the first time at least. The rain, though, made it more miserable. He could admit that.

They continued. He walked, trying to pretend Min wasn't a step behind, following for reasons he couldn't understand.

The first hint of something wrong was the smell of smoke, light and almost indiscernible in the rain. Tension filled his body as he continued to catch drifts of the scent.

"Do you smell that?" Min had slowed. He refused to acknowledge her, forcing her to jog to catch up.

While they were certainly 'lost' in the woods, he wasn't oblivious to their location. He'd kept their general direction away from humanity's sprawl. Or so he thought. The smoke refuted his assumption somewhat thoroughly.

Min walked next to him, her eyes darting the trees in the hope of finding some hidden town in the middle of a forest, as unlikely as that was. He eyes darted for the exact opposite reason.

"We need to decide what to do if we encounter people?" It was a half question, half demand.

The problem? He didn't know where the smoke was coming from. He couldn't see it, and the wind shifted direction too often. Aside from turning around completely, changing direction wasn't assured to lead him away from the source. So he kept walking straight, hoping that they'd end up walking by it.

"Are you going to ignore me the entire day?"

He slowed for a moment and then decided that yes, he would do exactly that.

"You're being a child." She hissed through gritted teeth.

It was not a statement he could refute.

He sped up, and she growled out a rather detailed expletive, probably something she picked up from the troupe.

She did not, however, leave. He was beginning to wonder if she ever would.

The ground leveled out, dipping only occasionally into ravines small enough for him to bridge the steepest parts. The vegetation grew light and the rain threatened to stop, sending down only a light smattering.

The smell of smoke grew more frequent and intense. They both kept peering through the canopy hoping to see smoke, albeit for entirely different reasons.

When they finally spotted the source, Stan realized there'd been no chance to avoid it. Or, perhaps more accurately, there'd been no chance to not see it. Oh, Stan could have avoided it effortlessly if it were not for the woman beside him with glee in her eyes.

"No." It felt like the first word he'd spoken all day.

"Oh…" She leveled him a look that made his blood run cold. "Oh, yes."

"Do you truly not grasp—"

"Oh, so now you speak?"

"…grasp what kind of danger this is?" He pointed toward a small town nestled in the valley. Or a village, barely. Mostly, it was a collection of homes and maybe a general store, but nothing else.

"No. No no no," he shook his head. "All it takes is one person to blab and—"

"And what, Stan Li? The Inquisitors will come? I have news for you: they're already after you. And we're running with no supplies at all."

"But they don't know where we are." The complaint sounded weak for reasons he could not discern.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, they do. They know we're in the forest—"

"Which is a massive area—why is this so difficult for you to understand?"

"Stan Li—"

"Stanley"

"Stan Li—"

"Or call me Stan, but you mispronounce my name one more time, and I'll walk." Which wasn't even a threat. He'd been walking all day in the hopes she would stop following him.

She hesitated, which was absurd. That stopped her short?

Why in all the frozen hells was she following him?

"Fine, Stan," she capitulated, and that almost made him angry too, "but you do realize people who live out here aren't usually fans of the Empire."

"…so?"

"So, do you see any roads going into town? Any at all?"

He blinked, then glanced over at the village. "…no."

"Right, no. And so do you think anyone down there pays taxes?"

"…ta—what?"

"Taxes, Stan. Taxes. Do you think they pay taxes?"

"How in the hells should I know?"

She huffed in exasperation. "They don't, Stan, and they don't want to. People like this want nothing to do with the Empire. They're the last people who will tattle on us."

"Tattle? Ugh, no. It's still too—"

"Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go down there—no, don't argue. I'm going, cause those people definitely have supplies. You will stay here and wait. When I come back with supplies, then we can trounce all through the forest toward wherever-the-hells you intend to take us."

"N—"

"Don't say it. I'm really getting tired of that word. I'm going; you're waiting."

"N—"

"And if you decide, for some unfathomable reason, to leave, I will go find your Inquisitor friends, purely so you can reacquaint yourself with them."

"You wouldn't." But he didn't sound very confident.

She was bluffing. He knew she was bluffing. She had to be. It would be almost as bad for her as it was for him.

She smiled a smugness he desperately wanted to wipe off her face, if only he could figure out how.

"Gah! Fine, go," he said finally. "Go and ruin our chances of getting away."

"You are a fool, Stanley Chao," she said, nodding in satisfaction, "but I still need your cloak."

"My what?"

"Your cloak, I need it."

"Why would I—"

"Just give it to me. Please."

That didn't sound like a 'please' should, but he gave it to her anyway.

She took the cloak, folded the hood beneath it, and then arranged it on one shoulder with her cloak on the other. After some fiddling, she'd used both cloaks to surround her body, looking very much like a styled poncho that draped down to her calves.

He blinked in surprise. She almost looked normal, with the only hints of her unitard exposed around her wrists and ankles.

"Now, I'll be back in—"

"An hour."

"Two hours."

"No—"

"Two hours. It'll take me at least twenty minutes to get down there, and you know that."

He couldn't refute that. He wanted to, and maybe he could do it in ten with a liberal application of crystal. But her, alone, without his help? Twenty minutes was probably generous. More like thirty.

"Fine."

She rolled her eyes at him and trudged her way down the hill.

---

After something like two hours, Stan had become antsy. Small details analyzed ceaselessly while waiting had left his gut uneasy. The small town looked almost idyllic from a distance.

There were signs amiss.

The lack of a road had been replaced with small trails leading out from random places in the town, some barely more than compressed grass. He counted two skeletons of burnt-down homes, with a possible third hidden on the far side. A few of the homes leaned slightly, almost unnoticeable against the already sloped ground.

The homes were built on slopes.

At first, he thought they'd dug into the earth to flatten the ground, but the planks of rough-hewn wood were also slanted. And there were gaps between them.

Only one large home near the center of town had a chimney, but it was made from wood. He stared at it a long time before concluding they must have lined the inside with clay because otherwise, he had no idea how the home hadn't burnt down. Perhaps that explained the burnt homes.

The longer he looked at it, the more the town looked…fake. Like a poorly built prop designed to look real only from a distance.

He spotted people moving about, if sparsely, so people did live there. It did nothing to ease a growing sense of foreboding. Either these people cared little about how they lived, or they didn't expect to live here long.

But why? The list of things he didn't know was like a burr shoved under his skin.

It felt like a trap. How an entire town could even be a trap, he didn't know. He had no basis to compare it to. But it felt like one, and the more he looked at it, the more that unease built in his stomach.

Running had always been so simple. It was supposed to be simple, wasn't it?

Inquisitors after you? You run. Difficult, yes, but not complicated. If anything, there was clarity in running. It narrowed down existence to only a few simple needs and…perhaps, there might be a part of him that liked how life became guileless in those moments.

That woman ruined everything. It was an absurd thing to think. He knew it was absurd, yet it didn't stop him from feeling it.

He should just walk away. Whatever was going on down there was no concern of his. If anything, it might provide a distraction for the Inquisitors.

Yet even he knew just how absurd an excuse that was. Because he did care.

There were no Inquisitors down there. He felt certain of that now. If anyone could turn a town into a trap, they could. And no one would notice. Especially not him. It's why he avoided towns. That he noticed, and so shoddily at that, made him certain they couldn't be there. Min should be fine. Perhaps she’d found something better than following him around endlessly.

So why were his feet already walking toward town?

The idea of Min becoming a distraction for the Inquisitors made him angry, but not scared. There was a reason for that. Inquisitors, for all their brutality, had a certain impartiality and even fairness to their madness. Or if not fairness, their rules were consistent. They might kill without hesitation, but they would also take extreme measures to avoid hurting anyone not complicit. Even those who were complicit were usually safe if they cooperated. They never tortured, but they didn't need to when refusing to answer their questions could be considered abetting, and thus a death sentence.

It was this consistency that made them so effective. When talking was a form of protection, people tended to jump at the chance. He'd read of entire conspiracies being blown open by the mere presence of Inquisitors.

It's why he didn't fear for his family, and why he could never see them again. The Inquisitors no doubt learned everything they could from his parents and younger sister, and then left them alone. They would continue to leave them alone, so long as they had nothing more to say.

His parents hadn't even suffered for hiding Stan's talent, as it was natural for a parent to protect their children. They applauded his parent's paternal instinct even as they hunted Stan himself down.

That was the logic of the Inquisitor. It's what made them feared, and even loved, by some. They were brutal, yes, but they were known, a thing you could understand.

This town? It scared him.

Stan forcibly shut down his cyclic thoughts as he approached the village along one of the paths that led to it. He used no crystal, opting to half-climb, half-slide down the steep terrain. No need to announce what he was.

A middle-aged man with too many age lines on his face sat on a stump outside a home on the edge of town, though it was more shack than home. Proximity made obvious the structure's slant of splintered planks. There were no windows, but the gaps between the planks likely let in enough light during the day, probably. A small overhang kept most of the rain off, though Stan couldn't help but notice one of the man’s legs was soaked.

He held a crude metal knife in one hand, and a small piece of half-whittled wood in the other, with the blade half-bit into it. They were held in suspense as the man looked Stan up and down. Surprise turned to bafflement.

Soaked and wearing nothing but a striped unitard and oversized boots while water dripped from his nose, Stan had never felt more naked. Never more exposed and vulnerable.

Suddenly, he understood exactly why Min hated the unitard.

He coughed. "Have you seen a woman in a…uh, poncho?"

The man glanced toward the center of town, then slowly shook his head before refocusing on the wood and blade.

"I guess that's a no?"

No further acknowledgment was offered. He simply continued to shave more off the…shiv with practiced strokes. A shiv. Stan stared at it for a long second before deciding further interrogate was not warranted.

Besides, the man had glanced toward the only home with an active chimney, dead center of town. That was enough. Stan had no need to antagonize the man into shivving the apparition in front of him.

He turned with out a word and headed into town.

The quality of the shacks improved the further Stan walked, though never enough to graduate from hovels. The two burnt husks could hardly be described as a loss.

Eyes followed him from within the hovels—he could practically feel them peeking out through the slats or just standing in the doorways. Men and women alike appeared older than they should, each one bearing age lines that spoke of a harsh, difficult life. He saw no children. They'd been hidden away or, perhaps, didn't exist at all.

A growing dread crept silently behind him as more than eyes followed him. Those who watched flicked their gaze behind him, giving it away. Reflected in them was a wary fear.

He scrapped out the willpower to not wrap himself up in crystal. Nor did he look behind, fearing it might trigger…something. He didn't know. Dread kept his eyes forward. Like a shadow in the corner of the eye that might become a monster in truth should it be seen.

Men appeared in alleys, watching idly with a predatory look. It took longer than it should have for him to realize he was being funneled toward the home with smoke pouring from the only chimney in town, probably because he was heading there anyway.

The home stood straight, the only one with a porch and a properly thatched roof. On the porch stood an old woman with a face wizened by innumerable lines. She stared down at him imperiously.

"Matron." He bowed.

She said nothing as rough-looking men flanked him to lean against the porch. They casually held battered bolt casters that nevertheless looked functional enough. They were aimed at the ground, fingers held on their triggers.

Stan swallowed hard. "I'm sorry to bother you, but—"

"The Wu Clan sends to us clowns now?" The Matron interrupted.

"I…ah no?" She'd spoken weirdly, like someone pretending at being a Royal. "I don't know who that is. I'm looking for a—"

"Do they seek to insult, then? Anger us into a false trap?"

Stan hesitated. "A woman…in a poncho? Have you seen her?"

"Or perhaps you're a fool, kicked out as useless? And now, what? You seek asylum?"

"I…" he took a breath, "have no idea what you're talking about."

Her eyes narrowed. "Or a spy."

"Look, I'm just looking for my friend," Stan said, growing exasperated. "She was wearing a poncho, and she came here looking for—"

"You want to see your friend?"

"…yes?" It was the first time she'd addressed his words.

"I've changed my mind. You'll live long enough to tell those shit-mongering assholes what we think of their gifts."

"I'll what?"

His guards shifted, drawing his eye. A predatory look had come over their faces. Stan's mouth went dry as a shiver crawled down his spine.

"Why don't you come in." She smiled without humor and stepped back to gesture at the door behind her.

Stan looked around, counting half a dozen men slowly closing in on him. All of them had casters, and a few had hatchets or small blades, but none pointed at him—yet.

He ground his teeth in frustration as stepped onto the porch. The Matron gestured for him to continue, and so he entered the dark home.

He slowed after a few steps to allow his eyes time to adjust. The darkness eased to reveal a figure sitting in a chair. It took seconds for him to understand what he was looking at.

"No no no…"

Stan staggered back as though struck. Fire and ice surged through his veins. His fist balled and he began to shake.

"You get to watch, spy, what we do to gifts from the Wu Clan."

Min had been tied to the chair naked, her unitard ripped and pooled at her feet. The rope had been cruelly tied tight enough to bruise. Her head lolled to the side, unconscious, and her eye was swollen shut.

"Was gonna give her to my son, but I figure bitches just need to breed."