The crickets chirped chaotically, but there was still a rhythm to their song. Gaiin had come to this field to hunt the insects, but their music changed his mind. Now Gaiin practiced swordplay in tune with the crickets, trying to choreograph their racket into one of his order’s trademark sword-dances. His weapon spun and cut the air, at all times avoiding the swarming insects that filled the air and obscured the setting sun like a haze.

The dance was starting to come to him now, Gaiin began to see the position of his opponent, the diverging pathways of fate that made up the dance’s steps.

The movement of the crickets caused Gaiin to make many sudden movements and changes of direction in this dance, it would be an unpredictable style. It would be useful against opponents who had fought him before.

Somewhere in the nearby swamp, a giant frog croaked and Gaiin took this as the signal of his enemy’s demise. The song still needed a name. Perhaps A Field of Crickets.

Gaiin sheathed his old, dull blade and peered at the edge of the swamp. Through the haze of insects he could almost make out a human shape watching him. It was small, a child perhaps?

“Hail,” he yelled walking in the direction of the figure “You there.”

The child, for he could see plainly now it was a human child, was startled and took off deeper into the swamp.

The sun had nearly set. Even one of his own tribe, a child of the water, would surely die alone in the swamp at night and Gaiin knew of no nearby settlements of his people. He would have to fetch the child.

Gaiin followed the babe out of the cricket haze and into the wet, muddy swamp. The sword-dancer was amazed at how well the small child appeared to be traveling through the thick mud and water, there were few who could match his speed in such terrain. Here was a child, nearly up to its neck in water and still staying easily out of his reach. He wondered if he was not indeed being lead, perhaps to some forgotten settlement of waterfolk left over from the age of myths. A village not yet under the thumb of the Godheads.

The thought excited Gaiin, and without realizing it his next steps pulled his feet from the mud to stand upon the water, and as he chased the whelp a song caught his mind and he ran through the steps of one of his dances. It wasn’t until he had begun the familiar dance in earnest that Gaiin became aware of what he dance he was practicing. He stopped, and sank back into the mud. Why had that song come to him? Was it an omen?

It was the first dance Gaiin had learned in his training to become a sword-dance, and it would be the last he would ever perform. The last dance of a sword dancer is wrapped around them like a blanket of fate, it must first be unraveled before they can learn the steps of any other. Gaiin’s was a fast and powerful song, and the dance a near perfect defense. It was his most powerful dance, but at the end he and his opponent slay each other. Gaiin had used the dance twice before, and each time he had been prepared to die for what he was fighting for. One day, he knew, the dance would kill him. And if it came to him today, unbidden, perhaps this was that day.

Gaiin looked around for the child. It was still within his field of vision, watching him. When Gaiin looked right had him the boy ducked behind a nearby rotting tree. His night vision had to be at least as good as Gaiin’s, truly this was a child of water.

 * * *

The Hag observed Gaiin, for the eyes of the child were as her eyes, as were the eyes of the frogs and the flies and all that dwelt within her bog. Her mind built a field of vision as large as her domain from the bombardment of sensory information it received. Within this field of vision was her prey.

What seemed too good to be true, wasn’t after all. His soul is rich a fragrant, undoubtedly that of a sword-dancer. The local rumors had not been exaggerations. She could smell it on his soul, power. The stories had also been accurate about his armament. A true sword-dancer carries a sword of great sorcerous might, this one was armed with a scrap of metal. He would make for easy prey and a filling meal. She would tear his spirit from his flesh and eat his bones.

 * * *

Gaiin had followed the child for hours through the swamp until they came upon a dilapidated cottage seemingly built into the side of a large rock. The front half was suspended above the water by rotten wooden stilts. The logs of the cabin were covered in moss of various shades of green. They all looked grey in the dying twilight. The child climbed up a ladder that descended from the cabin into the water, and slipped through the front door.

Gaiin trudged up to the ladder, and ascended after the boy. The wooden boards creaked with his weight as he hauled himself up the crude rope-ladder. Finally, he came to the top and pulled himself up to the door. He knocked gingerly, although the door seemed sturdier than appearances would indicate. The door opened itself at his knock, and Gaiin stepped into the darkness of the doorway. Behind him the door slammed shut.

Gaiin was not in a room, he was in nothingness. Blackness surrounded him, yet he could see as in daylight. His feet seemed to touch solid ground, but there was no more a floor than there were walls or ceiling.

Suddenly, Gaiin wondered if he were dead and gone to the afterlife, lead there by some child-spirit. Before him stood his dead master, Varshavis, perhaps the last true sword-dancer. The man he had seen slain with his own eyes by the traitor school, his sword melted down into scrap. Gaiin felt a familiar twinge of guilt.

Varshavis glared at Gaiin with dead eyes that seemed to look straight through him. He pointed at his former student.

“It was your fault. You could have saved me. You could have saved the order. You let them take the sword.”

Gaiin was unprepared. He staggered backwards, but his master followed.

“You let them take the sword. You let the school die.”

“The school lives master, it lives while I still breath,” said Gaiin, but the words rang false in the darkness.

“You let them take the sword.”

“But your wisdom master, the training. The knowledge lives in me,” Gaiin pleaded.

“It lives in the mockery of a pretender. You are no sword-dancer. Nothing lives through you. You let them take the sword.”

“Master,” began Gaiin.

Varshavis drew his sword. It was not the enchanted blade, but a steel one he had used when training Gaiin. It was perfectly polished as always and reflected the blackness. Varshavis took another, menacing step forward.

“I must strike you down pretender, and end your insult to our dead order. Let the once proud warriors rest in peace.”

“No,” said Gaiin taking a step backwards.

“Let yourself die with at least some honor child and take your punishment with dignity. You boasted of a title to which you have no claim. You are no sword-dancer.”

“No,” said Gaiin “No you are wrong. I am a sword-dancer. The tool is nothing, the music lives.”

Varshavis lunged with his blade, and Gaiin brought his up to parry. The swords clattered together and both combatants quickly withdrew them striking sparks. They both attacked simultaneously, counter each others blows. Gaiin recognized the rhythm of the song the weapons played immediately, it was that song, his final dance. But if he had to die here today to prove to this ghost the sword-dancers had lived, at least for a few more years, through him then at least his death served a purpose.

Varshavis brought down a hard cut, swung from the shoulder, and Gaiin spun out of the way. The attack left a wide opening in Varshavis’s defenses, but the song brought Gaiin somewhere else, and stabbed at empty space.

The cut nicked something invisible, and a spurt of white creamy blood fell from an unseen wound. For a second, the world around him flickered like a candle, and Gaiin briefly saw the interior of a cave, covered in refuse.

The loss of concentration was momentary, but it was all the sword-dancer needed. He closed his eyes and trusted the melody to find his true opponent. Varshavis vanished for the lack of attention, and the real battle began.

Gaiin brought his sword to a low guard and it clashed against claws as hard as steel. He parried three more such attacks, always from another direction. Whoever he was fighting was trying to press their advantage of invisibility, and it had already cost them the battle.

Gaiin watched the paths of destiny open up, watched the dance unfold almost as an outside observer watching his own actions. He saw his opponents steps, saw three steps ahead of them and timed a thrust of his sword. There was a wet, slurping noise as he withdrew the blade and the illusion around him melted completely. Immediately, the stench of rotten flesh met his nose. The cave interior was littered with human bones, and the half-eaten torso of a young girl still hung from a spit over a dead fire pit.

The Hag pushed some of her internal organs back into place and scrambled to her feet. Gaiin was still dancing, fighting with nothing, caught up in music only he could hear. She summoned up all the hatred that seethed within her withered soul and shot it at him in a bolt of lightning.

But the magic was caught in the music too, and the lightning swayed with the rhythm of the song. It danced through the air, and joined with the sword as partners. Like liquid down a drain the Hags power flowed from her into the dance. The sword now glimmered with lightning, as Gaiin ran the Hag through a second time. Her own magic turned against her, and shattered her wretched spirit. Immediately the body began to rot like a rotting log. Extremities fell off until she was a pile of mulch.

The pile finally dissolved into a hoard of writhing maggots.

For the first time in his life, Gaiin thought maggots looked unappetizing.