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It growled at her, spinning back around.

“Why won’t you die?” she growled back.

She risked a glimpse toward the others, relieved to see the other dakya looked to be on its last leg. Dinhal and Kladara had cornered it against a dense copse of pines and birches.

Iryana and the dakya came at each other again and again, and while she slowly cut away at the monster, it was getting harder to defend herself. Her energy was dropping quickly, despite the adrenaline.

Her blade hit the same spot again, where the skin had already been weakened, and though its entire leg was now painted black with steaming blood, it faced her down and snarled.

She took a bracing breath, preparing to form her forged beast spear, damn the consequences.

But finally, the dakya fell.

The ground shuddered with the impact, the leaves and needles fluttering back up into the air around the body before returning to the ground.

Iryana panted, brushing aside some of the hair that had escaped her braid and scarf.

The other dakya was down now too, her clan members making their way back to her while they argued.

“If you had waited for your opening, you might have gotten it,” Dinhal was chastising lightly.

Kladara rolled her eyes. “I kept it occupied, giving you your openings.”

They were all breathing heavily, wiping off weapons and returning them to their sheaths.

Uncle Dinhal turned to Iryana, face contemplative. “They’re still getting stronger, harder to kill. We may not have a chance without forgings much longer.”

“It’s good we got the practice in now, then,” she answered with forced lightness.

It would be harder to hide what her second forging had done to her if she was forced to use her forgings. But that was tomorrow’s problem.

“Let’s carry on. We have more ground to cover before we can head back,” she ordered, already heading down the path.

The others followed her.

Iryana groaned, flipping through the stack of papers on her grandmother’s desk.

She had a year’s worth of watch rotations and training schedules, carefully notated in her own small script. And among them were lists of the other responsibilities of her clan members, the times they were needed in the kitchen or storeroom or workshop. Then there was the wrinkled pile of discarded drafts.

It was a puzzle she had been trying to crack for weeks.

Her clan was dwindling and low on volunteers, so they had to make the best use of everyone’s time. There was still a lot to do to prepare for winter, and soon the dogs and sheep would return from higher in the mountains. The sleds were critical once Istri was blanketed in snow, and they had to train the dogs as they transitioned from herders to sled pullers for the season.

So much to account for.

But she was getting somewhere and would hopefully have something valuable to contribute soon.

She looked out the small window of her grandmother’s office, her gaze trailing over the still lush grasses and clusters of pines that separated the main house from the great wooden wall that kept out the beasts.

Then she registered the sun, already near its peak. It was almost time. Rushing to sort her stacks of paper into orderly piles, she began to breathe quicker.

Her fingers curled around the wooden armrests, the temptation to fling herself out of the chair growing. It was no larger than any other chair in the house, yet it seemed to swallow her. As if she were too small.

The view outside the window calmed her, but the sights of the office tangled her nerves. The old tapestries, the fading maps tacked to the walls, and the carvings made by guardians long since passed. The room held the power of their clan, as if it were a smell they could never air out.

Perhaps the air outside wasn’t too cold to crack a window. It was only the first day of the Falling Moon, midway through autumn. A day the First, the leader of their clan, typically spent meeting with the various heads of operation. A shudder worked its way through her lean body.

The Falling Moon was always unpredictable, sometimes bringing days warm enough to go out with just a light cloak, other times bringing small tastes of winter’s chill. Thankfully, the cold season hadn’t latched its claws in yet. There had been no true snow, but it was coming. Autumn was short in Istri.