#dumela

Yet it was not a solemn march with which she advanced. Tsavo himself had confirmed in his taunting that what she feared most had not occurred in the time of his reign, though she refused any delay to keep it as such. A sense of hope invigorated her body; she felt not the slow burn of fatigue.

“It is this way!” Called who she remembered to be Wampakka, sounding much farther away than he had been what seemed like seconds prior. Blythe’s memory of the Den and the way to reach it had diminished when the comfort she’d felt within it was replaced by danger created by its usurpers. Frustration slowed her pace, but when she circled around the copse her instincts mistakenly led her toward and reached the others, the dense wood had fluttered away like a curtain to welcome the golden expanse of savannah. It had been here, in Nagrand, that Blythe had been trained in the arts of stealth and speed, and she employed the latter at once.

Without regard for the subtlety Sidha had shown her, she leapt from human flesh and into that of La’hwsa, a piercing roar heralding the swiftness of a sprint.

The Den had been repurposed for war. Though the saberon were a people that often thrived in the throes of battle, what they had become - what they had been made into - was a machine with the sole purpose of manufacturing brutality. Metal slabs incongruous with saberon architecture lined the perimeter, the tops of which were wreathed in jagged wire and the occasional head left to rot on a spike. Unguarded by the ogres that surely made their mark inside, their need for the puppets Tsavo provided at its end, she and La’wampa forced a breach to open their way inside.

Alerted by the noise, they were set upon at once. Yet without the jeering of the leader they’d known, the slight advantage in numbers they possessed meant little without a warrior’s training. Tsavo had been selfish in all things, not the least of which was hoarding what power he was given to himself. Blythe had clashed against but one saberon before, Rak’kasa the One-Eyed who at first glance she deemed a traitor in kind, but felt the absence of strength in their resistance where a worthy brawl ought have been. Some of their own wounded were picked off, though their deaths bestowed them the vigor to find victory - the sallow air was thick with guma’narr rudrapyagi.

Somewhat bloodied from the fray, Blythe returned to her own skin and frantically began her search. She passed Wampogo, who busied himself in helping a recently liberated leoron to his feet, her heart pounding as she glimpsed his mane but did not recognize his face as Dumela’s. Panic hastened her steps, the certainty and vindication that swelled in the midst of so much doubt running out of her like a raft deprived of buoyancy. What if she was too late? What if Tsavo’s barbs had not been lain in truth at all, but to incite her into recklessness? It was certainly not below him, and he was yet a master strategist…

In their wild inquiry for something, anything, to follow, Blythe spotted the white coat of a felled saberon, stark and prone against the dirt. Alone, the carcass lay before a collection of makeshift cells that were cramped as they were dark, though the steel that stole the freedom of its captives was exceptionally sturdy. There was to be no outbreaks among those within.

A key was held in an overturned paw, fresh blood blooming from its neck and pooling into the cell before it. Blythe grasped it in her palm, squeezing the sticky metal, and peered into the darkness. She would have thought him a corpse if not for the slight movement to his tail, or the slow heave of his chest, but she could see the glint of his amber eyes as he looked outward.

Her breath was a jumble of confusion in her throat; she almost coughed in surprise. Too-quickly, without grace or much composure, she surged forth and worked the lock until the door swung open. Her feet were warm with the blood that coated the ground, and she almost thought to hesitate before drawing inside. Within, there was the source of a year’s worth of longing and sorrow. Even shrouded by near-pitch blackness, his was a face that she refused her memory to neglect where others of lesser impression passed freely from it.

“Dumela.” Saying his name gave strength to her voice, and then to her limbs as she bent them to a crouch before him. A calm intensity evened her features as she reached out to touch his face.

He let her. Though undoubtedly weakened since last Blythe had seen him, scars riveted across the span of his nose and muzzle, it was his eyes that shone with the alacrity she remembered. A sound not unlike a growl but possessing an oddly inquisitive lift first answered her. He was not a beast to express mirth openly or often, yet his eyes closed in a way she undeniably knew as peace.

“... La’hwsa.”

A smile broke the near-stern tightness of her mouth, almost brightening the darkness of the room. She cupped his paw, remembering how she’d freed it of a metal thorn, a mouse bestowing utmost tenderness to a beast who could end her with ease. “I told you I’d come,” she said, whether or not he’d shared her dreams. “Let’s get you out of here. Tsavo is no more. You are free.”