A mop of dark hair. Broad shoulders made even broader by a padded, deep moss green jerkin.

A man stepped out of the woods. No maletre. Just a man. Magenta relaxed her stance — but only a little.

Just a man. A tall man who had not yet noticed her standing right at the edge of the cliff.

‘Hello there!’ Magenta called out. She made her tone light and friendly and waved her bow-hand high in the air. No need to startle the just-a-man.

Unfortunately, the man startled quite severely in response to her call. He stumbled two steps back, took a half-step to the side so that he was partially behind a tree, and then looked over each shoulder before regarding Magenta more closely.

When Magenta simply stood there — just a woman on a rocky bluff holding a violin and waving — he took an uncertain step forward. ‘Ah, hello there,’ he called back.

The voice stirred her memories. Probably he was from Bluddrayl, she reasoned, and after so long away, the familiar and particular strains of her hometown area were returning to her. But... there was something about the way he stood... Feet planted, chest drawn up, elbows just slightly raised — it was a pose that she supposed said ‘ready to fight’, but it could equally as well have been ‘ready to hug’; the man did not emanate ferocity but a careful, primed awareness.

Just like he always had.

If it was him.

And it couldn’t be him.

The chances of—

Magenta strode right across the bare bluff and up to the man. At her sudden advance he took a little step back again and lowered his centre of gravity just slightly. His hair was parted in the middle and was just long enough to flop down and graze his forehead. He held her gaze a moment before he scanned the horizon and she noted his slightly furrowed broad brow, his crisp brown eyes, his rectangular jaw.

Now that she was closer she was sure. Completely sure. This was not just any man.

She took a few steps back again so that he could take in the full sight of her. She planted the back of her wrists on her hips, one hand still holding the bow, the other the neck of the violin, and grinned unabashedly at him. Even from a few steps back she had to tilt her head up to match his gaze, which said as much about her shorter-than-average height as it did his taller-than-average height, but with her chin raised just so it was as if she was daring him to remember.

In fact it looked just the way one might proffer a casual challenge to a friend.

An old friend.

After a moment passed in which neither of them moved, she cocked her hip and wiggled her eyebrows.

‘Magenta?’ he finally gasped.

‘In the flesh,’ she confirmed.

Victus smiled, but then he looked over each of his shoulders again.

‘It’s just me,’ Magenta said. ‘I haven’t any friends lurking amongst the bushes to ambush you.’

He jerked his head round straight. ‘Ah. Yes. Good — I mean, I didn’t ever think — not that when you left I — well — so where did you — you’re BACK —’

He seemed to be sputtering out the first few words of each thought as his mind leapt from one thing to the other as he processed the fact of Magenta’s presence in front of him.

‘S’alright if you thought for a second I was a bandit. I thought for a second that you were another maletre bat.’

‘Er — a what?’

She nodded. ‘Come see this.’

Magenta walked Victus over to the shredded corpse, near which the case for the violin she carried still lay open. She let Victus inspect the maletre bat — or what remained of it — while she stowed her instrument safely away.

As she did, she found she still had a grin on her face. She didn’t seem to be able to stop smiling. Even if she had imagined what it would be like to see Victus again, she had never imagined how much joy she might fill with to see him. To see that he was well.

And he did look well.

Magenta slung the violin case over her head so that it rested cross-body against her. It was strange how, with travel, the case’s pressure on her back had become as comforting as holding the instrument itself. She liked to feel it was close. She wondered if it was all part of the bonding magic. She was still getting used to it.

She rejoined Victus as he looked from the deformed bat-shape back into the copse of trees he had emerged from. She followed his gaze. ‘I never would have expected to see one so close to town. I’m glad you’re out here protecting the town from maletre, Victus.’

‘I’m actually — I mean, I’m not... Uhm...’

Magenta then turned instead to look out to the town and frowned, lost in her own thoughts. ‘How many maletre do you see a week? Are they all small animals like this bat?’

Victus inhaled a long, slow breath. ‘Again, I have to ask, a what?’

Magenta took a few moments to consider Victus and his confusion. ‘You’ve not heard of the maletres, then?’

‘No,’ Victus slowly confirmed.

‘Not the manifesting darkness?’

‘No.’

Magenta chewed her lip, not entirely convinced that this meant that the town had so far been unaffected by Dreathus and his magic. Sometimes it worked its way in in ways unnoticed until it was too late. Maybe he just hadn’t heard it called maletre. ‘Never seen any other deformed creatures like this, though?’

Victus looked down. ‘Granted, I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at here either way, but I’m going to go with a “no” again.’

Magenta also regarded the blobby mess of internal organs, leathery wings and slicked fur. One of the eyeballs was closer to Magenta than to the rest of the small mass. ‘That’s fair, I fairly well decimated it. But if you truly don’t know what maletres are, that’s definitely better’n the alternative.’

‘What’s the alternative?’

‘Being overrun with them.’

For a few more moments they both just stood there, contemplating — letting it all sink in — after all this time, Magenta thought, here is Victus. Body and blood Victus. Who wore the garb of a Bluddrayl warrior and guarded the lands of Bluddrayl from bandits. If anyone was going to help Magenta protect the town from the impending threat, she was hopeful that it might be him.

Which brought her back to her task at hand — why she had come back, the question he had half-asked her — ‘Though they’re here now,’ Magenta said. ‘So. You’d best learn about them.’ She sighed. ‘But where do we start?’

Victus jolted like his soul had temporarily left his body and only just returned to it. ‘Oh!’ he cried.

Magenta reached out a hand like she might — what? steady him? offer comfort? — she quickly pulled her hand back and gripped the strap that cut at an angle across her torso. This close to him, she realised that even his smell was familiar, though it came tinged with the steel of swords now; familiar is a memory, though, she reminded herself. She had no way to know where they stood now, not really. What was then, wasn’t now: She would do well to hold onto that mantra, she decided. She had left without warning, without explaining why, then or in all the years since. Who knew what he had made of it. So she asked instead, ‘What?’

He shook his head. ‘I just — I need to get back to town.’

‘Oh, right.’ And just like that the vibrancy that had filled Magenta on seeing Victus again drained away. After all, he wasn’t the only one she’d need to face now that she had returned.

Tabitha.

The weight of her past settled into the air all around Magenta. It made breathing feel thick and her movements feel sluggish.

‘We should go together,’ Victus suggested. ‘We should be careful if there are these — these —’ He nudged a stray clawed foot with the edge of his shoe. ‘These rabid bats around.’

Victus was unchanged by her shift in mood, the past made palpable only for her, and somehow that made her feel worse. If he would just ask her about it again, she could explain. But she wasn’t sure she had the courage to bring it up on her own. Not right now.

Coward.

You think you can be strong for the whole town when you cannot even be strong for just one man?

‘I can handle it,’ Magenta blurted out. ‘I’m not who I used to be.’ She heard the words and heard how they had come out all wrong. She cringed.

But Victus just smiled at her. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t doubt you can, Magenta.’ He lifted his arms and then clasped his hands above his head, flexing his muscles so that they pressed against the fabric of his jerkin. ‘But I’m not who I used to be, either.’

Magenta couldn’t help herself — she snorted out a disbelieving laugh and some of the heaviness in the air lifted. Enough that she could take a deep breath again, lift up her chest and square her shoulders, and then gesture her arms out and ahead. ‘Lead the way,’ she said.

‘You mean, you don’t know the way? What, have you been gone five years or something?’

She rolled her eyes and started off without him.

‘Too soon?’ he called to her back.