Autumn

Autumn stared around at the ring of young warriors, called Recruits. They stared back at her, some nervous, others eager to learn. Each one of them held either a knife or a spear formed from the living crystal of her sword. Buck had explained that while recruits were given some basic hand-to-hand fighting instruction, most of their combat training up until that point had been limited to learning how to maintain and fire their ballistic weapons, the guns. But they had next to no ammunition for those weapons and no way to get more in the foreseeable future. Autumn was confident the dwarven forges could produce bullets if she sent them a handful to copy, but that would take time that they just did not have. The goblins could have copies of that grenade made fairly quickly, but then the goblins would be able to make as many handheld explosives as they wanted on a whim and that was not a step to be taken lightly.

Anyway, grenades and bullets were out of the question for the moment. Knives and spears they had. So Autumn, who had been fighting with such weapons since she could walk (and why exactly had that declaration sent Buck into a spasm of shouted profanity?) was going to teach them how to use them against the Mistborn, and pray to the Creator they didn’t need to face anything stronger.

"Alright. We don't have much time, but this is a fairly basic concept and you're all highly intelligent and even more motivated. So let's begin. Spread out, weapons ready. Everyone find one of the runes I drew earlier, and stand next to it,” Autumn ordered.

"Shouldn't we partner up?" Recruit Pratt asked.

"Why? I'm teaching you to combat the Mistborn, not each other. I'd assume by now you have some idea how to incapacitate a fellow human."

She checked to see most of them nod with varying levels of confidence. Oh, dear. They were training to join their military, and yet from the looks on their faces, many of them were strangers to violence.

That was fine. Everyone has a first fight. The key is making sure your students live to see their second one.

Autumn closed her eyes and focused, and then listened to the startled yelps as twenty young people found themselves face to chest with their own seven-foot-tall, shadowy biped with glowing red eyes.

"What the Hell?" Buck choked out from somewhere behind her. He’d promised to only observe but she supposed it was a mite startling.

"These are shadow walkers," Autumn said. "Very basic Mistborn. They shamble through the Unformed, and occasionally band together to attack enclaves."

"They're illusions, right?" Tanaka asked, reaching forward as though to poke her shadow walker. The creature swatted her hand away.

Autumn focused her will on that particular creature, freezing it to stand with its nebulous arm still raised.

"No," Autumn said, "they're real. I summoned them using the runes just now. Don't worry, they're very weak. And not sapient as far as anyone has ever been able to determine. They're more like an amoeba than anything. They exist to consume. And these will consume you if you let them."

"Ah, Princess," Buck muttered. "What the Hell?"

Autumn flashed a brief, reassuring grin. She'd explain in a moment. "Of course, I am exerting my own control over them, so you're safe enough. Just remember that if I do lose control, you can end the summoning by destroying the chalk outline. But only do that in an emergency, please.”

She looked around. "Reynolds. You've got a good grip on that spear, there." She walked over to stand next to him. "Spread your legs just a hair wider, loosen that hand. You don't want a muscle spasm at the wrong moment. Good. Spear wielders, try to match Reynolds. Good."

She waved a hand and Reynolds' shadow walker swiped at him. He yelped, stumbled back, and swung the spear wildly. The butt of the spear connected with the shadow walker's waist more by accident than intent, but he collected himself and dodged the thing's first swipe and swung the blade towards its knee. Autumn froze the creature once more.

"Well done, Reynolds," Autumn clapped him on the shoulder. "Were that human, you’d have effectively taken them out of the fight.”

"It didn't seem to notice though."

"No, because it's not human. But that's fine. With a human, you need to be aware of weak points, joints, and organs, and nerve clusters. Mistborn don't generally have those. They're basically, what were those little candies? The squishy ones you offered me earlier, Recruit Michaels?"

"Gummi Bears, Champion."

"Gummi bears, exactly. These things are like walking gummi bears. There's an outer matrix that holds the form, filled by... mist stuff. Some kind of pseudo matter. Sorry, I don't think the words I use for it translate well. Regardless. No joints, no organs, nothing. So what you have to do to stop them is significantly disrupt their matrix."

"How do we do that?" Albertson asked.

"Well, you've got a spear there. So it's pretty simple. You stab it with the pointy end or bash it to paste with the rest. Whichever works best at the moment." Autumn nodded to Quin. “Those of you with knives, you have to make a lot of cuts into the matrix. Go for quick, wide slashes or deep stabs, but never stay in reach for long. Attack then dodge.”

The knife wielders nodded. Autumn released Quin and Reynolds’ Mistwalkers. Reynolds didn't yelp this time. He bashed the thing over the head, ducked a flailing arm, stabbed that and then bashed the knee, the other knee, and poked it in the gut. The creature lurched. Quin stabbed hers repeatedly in the gut, and the head, and in any limb it reached towards her.

"Good start. Keep going. Everyone ready!"

And then Autumn unleashed all of the shadow walkers.