The bullet only hits sheet, thankfully, though if Mordecai were still alive it would’ve gone through his neck. He can hear the gunman swear and fumble to reload before a war cry sounds and the man goes down with a thud. With his head covered by the sheet he can’t see whether or not the gunman’s alive, though he suspects not.

The candlestick holder cries out in rage. There’s a loud clang and the sound of a metal object being flung into the brush. Wrestling with the sheet, he doesn’t catch what the orc says but he hears the man run off into the forest. The orc follows, and several sets of footsteps after her.

If he hadn’t been focused on untangling himself, he might have picked up on that fact sooner. As it stands, he only realizes that the orc’s battlecry drew the rest of the mob when he manages to get himself upright and a woman’s voice (the same one that screamed before, perhaps) exclaim, “There are two of them?!”

Mordecai feels the sheet being lifted before he can think to do anything about it, and suddenly he’s looking into the woman’s eyes.

She screams and swings her dish at him.

Mordecai screams too.

If the sun burns like touching a pan from the oven before it’s had time to fully cool, the dish feels as though he’s been set on fire. It’s searing, agonizing, and it’s all he can do to back away before she can swing again. He brandishes his knife in shaky hands.

The woman runs at him, sunlight glinting off the metal plate in her hands as she swings it above her head. With a scream of rage, she brings it down with all the force of an angry god about to smite a sinner. For a brief moment, the plate looks almost like a war hammer. Through either sheer dumb luck or some long-buried muscle memory awakening, he manages to duck out of the way before she cracks his skull open.

She stumbles and Mordecai takes the opportunity to scramble away again. Two other men have rounded the side of the house. One holds a platter in front of him like a shield and the other appears to be dual-wielding butter knives, of all things. They aren’t moving to attack, just watching, so Mordecai decides to focus on the woman.

The woman has regained her footing and is currently hefting her plate, sizing him up. “Never seen a boneman back off,” she mutters.

“You see a lot of skeletons, lady?” he asks.

One of the men exclaims, “It can talk?!” which Mordecai thinks is just rude. The woman falters for a moment but quickly composes herself.

“So there’s a soul in there. You poor thing.” She readies her plate again. “Don’t worry, I’ll end your suffering soon.”

Mordecai doesn’t particularly feel like he’s suffering, aside from the aching heat that’s lingering in his skull, centered where the plate smacked him. He really doesn’t want to get hit by it again. The woman charges, and he does the only thing he can think of to defend himself: he closes his eyes and raises the knife.

There’s a strangled grunt.

Cautiously, Mordecai opens his eyes.

The woman’s face is only inches away from his. Her expression is one of shock. Her arms shake and the plate, which she’d been holding aloft ready to swing at him again, drops to the ground. The soft thud of it landing is almost deafening in the silence. Slowly, her eyes travel down and Mordecai’s follow.

The knife is buried in her gut.

He withdraws the knife without a word. As the woman collapses to her knees the two men rush forward. Mordecai readies the knife again but they don’t attack, instead going to the woman and dragging her away as quickly as they can, one pressing on the wound with his hand to try and stem the bleeding. They disappear around the corner of the house and Mordecai finally breaks from his stupor.

He’d killed that woman. She might live, if they take care of the wound quickly enough. If they have the medical supplies for it. But he doubts they do. She’s probably going to die.

Mordecai doesn’t think he’s ever killed anyone before. His hands start to shake, and he drops the knife as though it bit him. He doesn’t know how to react to what just happened, so he just stands there and stares at his hands.

And of course, because he’s distracted, someone sneaks up on him. The next thing he knows, there’s a man behind him holding a necklace wrapped around his vertebrae as if to throttle him with it. Mordecai doesn’t need to breathe, but the necklace burns just like the plate. He scrabbles at it with bony fingers, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t get his phalanges between his neck and the chain. The pain quickly becomes unbearable.

There is a moment where all sensation begins to dull. His vision goes slightly dim, sounds seem to distort and echo, even the pain…it doesn’t fade, but it almost seems like it’s happening to someone else and Mordecai is experiencing it through sympathetic reaction.

Then the necklace falls away and it all comes back into focus. Mordecai stumbles forward, rubbing at his neck, and looks back to see the man slumped on the ground, the tip of a spear embedded in his back.

He looks up into the eyes of the orc woman, holding the shaft of the spear and grinning at him. “Came back for ya,” she says.

Numbly, Mordecai nods in reply. “Thanks.”