Excerpt:

(uneditted - contains errors like crazy and some crazy errors)

-

They say there is such a thing as traveling so slow, you’re actually only standing still. Groune tried not to think or grumble about that as he hobbled along after Asteth and Avien. Damned youth and their…youth.

Asteth paused mid-step, as if reading his thoughts (well if he wasn’t reading Groune’s thoughts, he was certainly reading the old man’s labored gasps) and turned. “I could carry you, if you like.” An amused quirk of the lips revealed he very much knew that Groune would never in a millions years accept.

“Oh, yes, I accept,” Groune grumbled. “By all means, carry me on your back. And when you oafishly slip and fall into a puddle or down a cliff, you can blame me after we’re both killed and we’ll all be happy.”

“I won’t be happy, you warrior-killer!” Asteth grinned and crossed his arms, walking backward.

“You see? You see?” Groune waved his stick. “Blaming me for your carelessness and clumsiness. I—”

“Shush.”

Groune and Asteth turned to Avien in surprise. They hadn’t thought she minded their banter—

A bird squawked overhead, and Asteth winced and in a few strides was by Groune’s side, hands twitching near his axe (one of his axes), eyes scanning the uppermost branches of trees around them.

Groune’s hands tightened on his walking stick. Right. Their banter had been pretty loud—

It was almost ghostly, the way Avien had stepped nearer a tree without making sound that Groune’s ears could detect. Avien was watching a spot behind the tree she was masking her presence with. Asteth’s eyes were still roving around the nearby treetops.

Both tensed at the same time. Groune tensed in reaction to their tension. They waited.

Asteth drew his right hand axe. Avien, Groune noticed, had blades in her hands, blades he had neither seen her draw nor seen them on her person. His hands unclenched and clenched around his walking stick.

It came, faster than either Asteth or Groune expected. Avien only saw a flash and tracked it to the pair before Asteth’s axe was knocked out of his hands. Only Asteth’s quick reflexive kick outward prevented him from further, almost certainly fatal injury.

Unfortunately, with blades in both her hands she had no sheaths with which to put away one of the butterfly swords in order to throw a throwing weapon at it so she threw her left hand sword, sending it flying with a jerk of her arm before moving away before the creature could track the direction of the throw and come after her—or rather, where she’d just been standing.

Asteth drew his second axe from his back, slicing down—onto empty air, stirring up a whirlwind of leaves. Avien ran right into the whirlwind, using its sight inhibition to slice at the creature’s arm before the creature ran away. Asteth hastily changed direction and whirled his axe behind him, right over Groune’s head as Groune ducked, and the creature squealed, in pain or in frustration that it’d been foiled from killing its target at the last minute no one was sure—and Avien found herself being pushed back against against an onslaught of fierce strikes with deadly-looking talons.

Her remaining butterfly sword flew out of her hands as she struggled to adjust to this sudden unbalance of only wielding one sword, and as Avien fell backwards to avoid a scratch at her head, Asteth’s axe came down, almost brushing Avien’s leg as the creature jumped, avoiding the axe completely, and kicked at Asteth’s face.

Asteth fell and the creature screamed in battle-rage defiance and victory, before lunging in for the kill. Pausing to scream had been its mistake. Avien grabbed a fistful of leaves and threw them at the creature.

For a moment, the creature froze. Asteth didn’t waste any time gaping. He grabbed his axe from where it had fallen and, scrambling up, brought it crashing down on the creature’s head.

For a moment, no one moved.

And then the creature swayed slowly, falling to the ground almost like it’d become weightless.