Lisa

The honey mead was warm, sweet, and thick enough to coat the back of her throat. Lisa took another long pull from the bottle, letting out a quiet sigh as the alcohol settled into her stomach.

Just one more lap around the south wall, she thought, dragging her boots through the dry dirt of the perimeter road. One more lap, and then I can go find a nice, dark floor to pass out on.

The afternoon sun was glaringly bright, reflecting off the pale stone of the city wall to her left and making her eyes ache. She tugged the high collar of her half-cape up a little further, mostly out of spite toward the sky, and adjusted the heavy leather strap across her chest. On her back, Star's Fall shifted, the absurdly heavy slab of black metal pressing down on her shoulders. She was used to the weight, had carried it for years, but right now it just felt like one more thing keeping her from a nap.

Up ahead, a man in dusty work clothes was walking toward the city gates, holding the hand of a small boy who was kicking a pinecone along the road.

Lisa took another sip of mead, her grey eyes half-shut.

Then the brush on the dungeon side of the road exploded outward.

The man yelled, yanking his son backward so hard the kid lost his footing and hit the dirt. Two massive shapes lunged out of the tangled weeds. Demon dogs. They were the size of ponies, with patchy, scorched-looking hide, way too many teeth, and a smell like wet garbage set on fire.

Normally, Lisa loved dogs. She would drop everything to pet a stray mutt. These things didn't count. They were just ugly, mean, and currently ruining her afternoon.

Oh, for crying out loud. If I burn through my energy now, I'm gonna have to go beg Andelay for a spoonful of blood before dinner.

She shoved the cork back into her bottle, jammed it into her bag of holding, and reached over her shoulder.

"I wasn't even supposed to be on this side of the wall today!" she groaned at the top of her lungs, kicking off the ground.

The dirt road cracked beneath her boot. In a blink, the wind was roaring in her pointed ears, her blonde twin-tails snapping straight back as she crossed the fifty-yard gap like a shot from a ballista. She didn't bother trying to swing the sword properly—at her size, swinging a blade five times her weight without bracing was a good way to throw herself into a wall. Instead, she unlatched it mid-sprint, grabbed the thick length of rope tied to the pommel, and used her own speed to whip the five-foot slab of metal forward ahead of her.

The first demon dog was already in the air, jaws wide and dripping black saliva inches from the father's raised arm.

Star's Fall hit the beast square in the side.

There wasn't even a proper slicing sound, just a deafening crack like a boulder splitting in half. The sheer mass and momentum of the ultra-dense blade folded the monster in two, blasting its broken body thirty feet off the road through a cluster of dead trees while the heavy steel bit deep into the dirt path.

Lisa caught up a split second later, planting both boots against the flat of the buried blade to kill her own momentum. She skidded to a halt in a cloud of kicked-up dust, the impact rattling her teeth, and immediately slumped forward to lean her elbows on the top of the sword's hilt.

"Freaking... gross," she muttered, wiping a speck of demon blood off her cheek with a gloved forearm.

A few paces away, the second demon dog dug its claws into the dirt, skidding to a halt. Its glowing red eyes darted from the mangled trench where its packmate had vanished, to the terrified man scrambling backward with his crying kid, and finally to the tiny girl in the black corset and skirt glaring at it from atop a massive sword. A low, vibrating snarl rumbled in its chest, its hackles spiking as it crouched low to the ground.

Lisa didn't even pull the blade out of the dirt. She just rested her chin on her hands, staring back at the thing through heavy, tired eyes.

"Go on, then," she said, her words slurring just a tiny bit at the edges. "Jump. Do something stupid so I can go back to my drink."

Lisa let out a long, world-weary sigh as she trudged past the same gnarled oak tree for the fifth time that night, her boots crunching through a thick carpet of dead autumn leaves.

She had volunteered for the northwest forest perimeter again. Not out of civic pride, obviously, but because vampires couldn't sleep at night anyway, and wandering around the dark woods alone beat staring at the ceiling while everyone else in town snored. Besides, night patrols were supposed to be quiet. Nothing ever happened out here aside from the occasional lost merchant or a stray badger.

Stopping beneath the heavy canopy, she unhooked her flask, tilted her head back, and upended it over her open mouth.

A single, solitary drop of fortified honey mead hit her tongue.

"Runnin' out..." she grumbled, squinting accusingly into the empty metal spout. With a practiced, lazy motion, she shoved the dead flask into the bag of holding at her hip, rummaged around elbow-deep in the extra-dimensional space, and pulled out a fresh bottle. Her last one. The second this one ran dry, she was officially declaring her shift over.

She popped the cork with her thumb, took three long, burning swigs, and lowered the bottle with a contented huff—right as the dark forest in front of her turned a thick, wobbly shade of green.

Lisa blinked, staring blankly through the gelatinous wall that had just dropped from the oak branches above. Her mead-soaked brain took a solid three seconds to process why the air suddenly tasted like sour lime and why her skin was starting to tingle.

She looked down. Inside the translucent green mass enveloping her torso, her favorite black corset and purple skirt were actively dissolving into fizzy little bubbles.

"Wha—" she started to say, immediately getting a mouthful of acidic goop.

Slime.

Pure, offended irritation overrode the alcohol. Lisa dropped into a crouch, braced her legs, and launched herself straight upward with enough explosive force to crater the dirt beneath her. The sudden kinetic shockwave blew the giant slime apart in a wet, gross pop, sending splatters of glowing green jelly raining down through the leaves as she rocketed a dozen feet into the air.

Even with Star's Fall strapped to her back like a five-hundred-pound anchor dragging her back toward the earth, she hung at the apex of her jump just long enough to watch the tattered remnants of her high-collared cape drift away on the night breeze.

She hit the forest floor boots-first, bending her knees to absorb the heavy thud of her landing.

Silence settled back over the woods. Slowly, Lisa looked down at herself.

Her shin-high leather boots had survived. The heavy belt holding her bag of holding and her sword harness had survived. Literally everything else was gone. As if to rub salt in the wound, one last surviving scrap of fabric clinging to her left shoulder chose that exact second to flutter off into the dark.

Lisa stood completely still in the moonlight, pale skin bare to the chilly night air, clutching her bottle of mead in one hand while her massive black greatsword loomed over her head.

"Just freaking great," she slurred loudly to the empty trees, already turning on her heel to stomp back down the dirt trail toward the city gates. "That corset took twenty minutes to lace up! Now the whole town's gonna see me naked, and I'm not even drunk enough to not care. Somebody better buy me a barrel of mead for this."

The air whistled past Lisa's pointed ears as she launched herself above the treeline, pulling the thick hemp rope taut between her gloved hands. Down below, the last of the three forest trolls was lumbering backward, club raised, squinting up at the tiny blonde blur spinning against the grey sky.

Just die already so I can go take a nap, she thought, putting her hips into the rotation.

Star's Fall hummed, a massive slab of dark metal gathering terrifying speed as she swung it around her like a hammer throw. One rotation. Two. She lined up the release right with the ugly brute's collarbone—

Snap.

All the tension vanished at once. Without the counterweight of a blade five times her own mass, Lisa’s momentum completely hijacked her body. She spun out like a dropped top, yelping as she pinwheeled through the air and slammed face-first into the dirt. She skidded ten feet, plowing a neat trench through the mud with her chin before coming to a stop.

High above, the massive greatsword sailed gracefully over the troll's head, cleared the twenty-foot stone wall of the city, and vanished over the rooftops like a falling star.

Lisa lay in the mud for a long second. Slowly, she pushed herself up onto her elbows, spitting out a mouthful of grit and a crushed dandelion. Looking down, she held up the frayed, smoking end of the rope still wrapped around her forearm.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" she yelled at the sky, her voice cracking with sheer, unadulterated misery. "Do you know how much braided wyvern-hemp costs?! That rope was supposed to last another six months!"

Across the clearing, the surviving troll blinked, looking from the empty sky down to the very small, very muddy vampire throwing a tantrum in the dirt. It raised its club, grunting as it took a heavy step toward her.

"Don't you even start with me!" Lisa barked, scrambling to her feet and aggressively brushing mud off her black corset—mostly just smearing it around. "I'm off the clock! My sword is gone! Go bother the guys with the spears!"

Before the troll could take another step, half a dozen city guards rushed past her, their halberds gleaming and enchanted tips flaring with red light. The captain yelled a formation order, and they swarmed the beast's legs, hamstringing it before driving three spears into its chest as it toppled. Within ten seconds, the monster was dead.

One of the younger guards wiped green blood from his cheek, panting as he looked back at her. "You alright, Miss Lee-Lynn? Where'd your—"

"In town!" she groaned, throwing her arms up and letting them slap against her thighs. "It's in town! Because my life is a big, stupid joke and nobody is laughing!"

She didn't wait for them to finish harvesting the troll ears for the bounty. Still grumbling under her breath, she stomped toward the open town gates, digging into the small leather pouch at her hip. Her hand sank past the fabric up to the elbow, rummaging around in the extra-dimensional space until her fingers closed around the cool glass neck of a jug.

She yanked out the fortified honey mead, popped the cork with her thumb, and took a long, heavy swig right as she passed under the portcullis. The sweet, burning liquid washed the taste of dirt out of her mouth, settling warm and heavy in her belly.

Okay. Better. Slightly.

There wasn't any screaming coming from the market square, and no plumes of dust rising from collapsed taverns, which meant she probably hadn't killed anybody. Probably.

Wiping her mouth with the back of her forearm glove, she trudged down the cobblestone street, grey eyes squinting over the rooftops to figure out where five hundred pounds of dense metal had decided to park itself.

Lisa’s left cheek was squished flat against the sticky wood of the tavern table.

Why is the ceiling moving? Ceilings aren't supposed to walk around. That's against the rules.

She blinked slowly, her grey eyes struggling to focus on the plate sitting a few inches from her nose. The beef skewers she'd ordered an hour ago were long gone, leaving behind a smear of grease and a single, tiny sprig of green parsley they'd put on the side to make it look fancy.

She hated it.

"Look at you," she mumbled into the wood, her words running together in a heavy slur. "Freaking... leaf. Sitting there like you own the place. Think you're better than me?"

She lifted her right hand, aiming a gloved finger to flick the parsley onto the floor. She missed by two inches, smacking the rim of the ceramic plate instead. It rattled loudly against the table.

Stupid plate. Dodged me.

Normally, she was pretty good at hiding how much she'd had to drink. Tonight, though, there were four empty bottles of fortified honey mead rolling around near her elbows, and a fifth one—pulled straight from her bag of holding after the barkeep tried to cut her off—was currently being used to prop up her other arm. It had been a long day. A bunch of oversized crawlers had come out of the dungeon near the south wall, and she'd had to run all the way over there, swing her sword around, get bug spit on her good boots, and listen to the town guard thank her for twenty minutes when all she wanted to do was lie down.

And it was nighttime, which meant she couldn't even go to sleep even if she went back to her room. Being a vampire was the worst.

With a loud, theatrical groan that made a couple of merchants at the next table look over, Lisa pushed herself upright. The room tilted hard to the left. She reached out and grabbed the hilt of Star's Fall to steady herself. The massive black-and-silver sword was buried a solid three inches deep into the thick oak floorboards right beside her booth.

The tavern owner was still glaring at her from behind the bar for stabbing his floor, wiping down the same mug he'd been wiping for five minutes, clearly too intimidated by the giant hunk of metal to actually come over and make her pull it out.

Lisa dragged the fifth bottle of mead closer, resting her chin in her palm. Her blonde twin-tails were lopsided, one of the little bat hair-ties sliding down toward the ends of her hair and barely hanging on.

"Hey," she called out, waving the bottle vaguely toward the nearest occupied table, or maybe the bar, she wasn't entirely sure which one she was looking at. "Hey. Knock knock."