The Glade Rider

~

Keeva nodded hurriedly at the elf’s words. Pale eyes still watching every movement, every shift in weight as if she were one of the wild cats they had heard earlier. Her heart thrummed heavily in her chest, not from effort but from excitement, the small thrill that came from combat whether that be mock or not. 

But it quickened as Gwen asked her to swing at her. Not that she expected to hit the woman- she could always pull back if need be- but she did feel that small inkling of fear at the thought of accidentally hurting her. She swallowed that fear as she was motioned forward. Taking a fraction of a second to decide before she lunged and swung her arm out towards Gwen.

To her surprise, the movement wasn’t halted though, and the other wildling used that momentum to set her off balance. Keeva found herself quickly about to meet the ground and instinctively she breathed out darkness to stop the impact. As she would have made contact with the ground, she instead sunk into a cluster of shadows, quickly solidifying a few feet away from her original position. She looked up at Gwen apologetically. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, well I mean I did- but it was just a reflex kind of. Do we need to do that again? I can not use shadows this time.”

“No, you should use your innate abilities more.” Gwen confirmed, “But work on the underlying skills as well. Use everything you have in whatever capacity you can.” She continued on, explaining basic techniques, footwork, hand movements, where to stand firm and where to be agile. If she could save at least one dragon… or give her the skills she could use to save herself… maybe she’d do something good with her life.

They trained for hours more, until the sun was cresting against the trees. Sweat pouring, muscles aching, screaming, Gwen finally stopped. In the distance, there were voices calling out for the dragon and though she could always push herself more, harder, work longer, hunt and train further, she knew the humans would be looking for their friend. “They’re calling for you. You should take the deer, have a few good meals.”

~

Keeva’s eyes tracked Gwen as she moved around her, appraising her stance. She flinched ever so slightly at the blade on her thigh but she nodded. Other form. The way Gwen explained things made sense and the dragoness shifted her weight forward when the other woman widened her stance for her. Keeva saw another small smirk flit onto Gwen’s face and she focused her attention on defending herself once more. 

Using her magic to try to see where Gwen would strike required more focus than Keeva was used to giving her magic. But as the other wildling darted forward, she felt it. Almost like a tensing of muscles. She felt the intent of the swing before it came and ducked underneath it. Felt the slight breeze as it just missed her.

But then Gwen dropped low. Something Keeva didn’t anticipate. The wildling’s leg swung out and the dragon hurriedly put her arm out to take some of the force. She let out a small grunt as she took the blow against her forearm and calf but her stance didn’t buckle. 

It had been a long time since she spared with anyone. Even just soft blocking blows such as these, and the only time before this had been in dragon form. But as she pushed Gwen’s leg back and recentered, Keeva remembered she actually used to enjoy it. Perhaps it appealed to the predator instinct in her or maybe it just felt good to release some of the pent up energy she kept coiled in her chest. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was but she found herself almost grinning now as she focused on the other woman ready for another blow. 

-

It was a boon to have a good student who took instructions quickly and although she had taught very few how to fight and fend for themselves over the years, Gwen once thrived in training others. She recalled the days when she would teach her siblings and the tribe members how to fight and best defend against the sloppy fighting styles of humans, how best to use their elven senses and agility, and how to get out of a situation quickly if need be. But she pushed those thoughts and those memories back, they were all gone after all. And she might have made a mistake in not staying with them but she wouldn’t make the same mistake for Keeva. She was a young dragon who needed real guidance and in the world they lived in, it was imperative she knew how to fight.

And although Gwen did enjoy a good brawl, this was different. There was only the smallest moment of amusement passing over her features as Keeva moved to block her blow. “Good. Next time, move with the blow, someone stronger than me might have broken your arm.”

Gwen steadied herself again, sweeping her leg in a circle as she jumped, shifting her weight from her front to back leg. “Avoid, assess, adjust.” She shrugged quickly, “Not always in that order… but you get it. I’ll show you… swing at me like that.”

She didn’t care enough about the eclipse. There was chattering in the tribe about perfect places to see it, many decided to climb trees and there they sat, nested in sturdy branches, waiting in awe. She knew that she would only see that once in her life, but didn’t find herself drawn to it. Instead, weeks ago, she went to the woods, by a few of her wolves and with Gwen, who felt more like her family than anything else in the world and there she chose to sit against a tree and kept herself busy by working to replace some arrows she lost in a hunt the other day.

Indi thinks she just felt tired, and rested her eyes for a few minutes, but there was a sense of unease when she comes to. The wolves around her didn’t notice anything as they continued to wrestle and play.

But for a few minutes it was hard to tell what was real life and what was the dream she had. No, no, it wasn’t a dream. It felt.. she doesn’t know. She can’t pinpoint the feeling. Can’t pinpoint why it felt so unnerving. Her wolves have melded in to other wolves, and her surroundings changed from the woods to something rockier.

Something that called her there. There was a whisper in her mind almost to tell her to seek it out. The voice speaks in every language but no language at all and she can’t figure out the words but she knows what it says. There was a gem, a beautiful brilliant green color she hadn’t seen before in nature.

Her mouth feels dry when she comes back to and looks over to @thegladerider​ to see if she noticed. If she did, Indi didn’t see it on her face. “We can’t stay here,” she says.

-

Gwen had been around for the last one, sure, but she’d paid it as little mind then as she did now. Realistically, her magic wasn’t as terribly affected as once you bonded with the animals around you, they saw you as family rather than a magi looking to use magic on them. So Gwen sat in the treetops with Indi when they’d finally taken a break after scaling to a rockier part of the landscape, sharpening her blades, scouting the area, watching for any animals or hunter who might be malicious. The former she wasn’t as worried about. Animals generally huddled together and took refuge during natural events like this, it was as if their internal clocks were thrown off just as much as magic was. But the latter, well she didn’t trust most humans on a good day.

She also wondered if it might be some sort of respite to Indi. Berserkers tended to struggle with their beastly urges more than any other magi and the leeching of her magic might mean she’d get a little break from trying to hold herself in all the time. Gwen had only really known a few other berserkers in her lifetime, exceptionally rare like they were, so she understood little of their abilities. Still, she kept a close eye on her just in case the eclipse had some more disastrous ramifications for her.

“You alright?” Gwen asked, glancing over as she sheathed her blades. Indi wasn’t one to make such a drastic decision, especially with the lace of… anxiety? Fear? Worry? Something like that in her voice. She wasn’t sure what, especially with her own magic dampened.

“Yea, alright…” Gwen stated and scaled down the tree, being careful as she descended not to land on any of the sharper rocks below. “Where we goin’ then? Safer to find a cave or set up camp or something for the night... what with the magic and the eclipse... crazy that it’s been five hundred years already.”

It wasn’t a large clearing. Large enough for a few piles of rocks, a fallen tree big enough for a few people at most to sit on, and one grieving elf. She had already screamed, railed, bled, burned and buried the ashes of her loved ones. She’d collected as many stones as she could, saved the biggest for headstones, and lined the little mounds of dirt with the rest. It was amazing to see just how small of things people could be reduced to. So large in life, and only a pile big enough to fit into a jar in death.

Gwen heard footsteps behind her but she was too exhausted to even turn around and face whoever it was. If they killed her, at least she’d get to go on with her family into the After. And if not, they could fuck off for all she cared. The half elf gripped her bow tighter, a snarl breaking across her dirty, blood and salt-streaked face. They weren’t tears, never tears.

“The fuck you want?” She spat, whirling to glare daggers at the dark figure skulking through the trees.

She doesn’t wonder how she’ll die. She knows. She’ll die lost and forgotten in the woods to be consumed by fungus and scavengers. Her bones picked clean, body looted by no one her spirit knew. To be returned to the ground. “You would not be claimed so easily, Gwen,” she whispered. She hopes her companion has a heroes death.

“They don’t have voices,” she agrees, at least in terms of speaking to her wolves, “But I know what they say. I know their howls, be them lonely or happy or a warning. Like that one,” she says softly, after the arrow landed, “Was one of triumph.”

The doe ran, but still Indi knelt down to the ground, fingers interlaced with the ground and whispered a prayer to the gods, to the spirits that connected them all. She thanked the stag, told him that he would not go to waste. There was a use for everything he gifted them. “The hard part is over. After you.”

There were few things Gwen believed in as fiercely as she did the fact that fate, whatever its machinations, rarely was kind and was even less often just. Her death would be something likely far in the future, just for the fact that she would spend her entire life missing her loved ones and breaking her heart over and over as she tried to find them. So she said nothing in response to Indi’s wish and merely carried on with their hunt.

~

Keeva’s brow furrowed as she considered Gwen’s words. Applying to humans, elves, and dragons. She hadn’t even considered that a possibility. She might have dismissed the idea of tuning into others magically, thinking it too close to her telepathy, had she not just tried with the animals. This was different. It wasn’t the intrusion she saw her telepathy as. This was more of a magical intuition. She had heard the phrase Dragon’s intuition before but never thought anything of it. Her curiosity was piqued and she fought the urge to reach out with that magic towards the woman in front of her. To see if it truly was possible for her to read those beyond animals. 

The thought was interrupted at the mention of swords and training. A small bemused smile pulled at Keeva’s lips. It was an unexpected offer, but a welcome one. With that, the elf palmed her dagger and the dragoness saw the flash of a grin before the woman rushed her. Reflexively, Keeva jumped back out of her way, widening her stance. Gwen pulled back, just short of where Keeva had been standing. 

~“Those senses for feeling the animals… use them on me… try to predict where I’ll strike.”

The dragoness nodded, a bit breathless with surprise. Readying herself, she focused her senses on the woman in front of her. It was more difficult, trying to tune into Gwen’s intent with her magic. The animals were simple, their emotions straightforward. But as she reached out her magic to the woman ahead of her she caught more than just one emotion. There was a calm amusement radiating from her but underneath Keeva felt a familiar mix of deep anger and sadness. She refocused, trying to sense anything that might give her an indication for how Gwen would move.

-

Gwen’s magic wasn’t the strongest. She could communicate and influence the moods and thoughts of animals but bonding had never been a possibility that she’d considered. She had always used it to her advantage in hunting and rounding up animals but never anything more. And even if she’d never tested or experimented with the extents of her magic, like trying to use her animal bonding with dragons or using the telepathy facet to truly communicate with the animals, she knew she wasn’t capable of that much. She’d also never considered her influencing them to be that much of an intrusion as she made mere suggestions, and whether the animals took them or not wasn’t up to her. Bonding with a dragon though, even if she had the strength in her magic to do so, well… after losing her family, she didn’t think she could.

Gwen circled Keeva once more once she got into… what she probably thought was a stable stance. Gwen tapped the flat side of her dagger against Keeva’s left thigh, “Stay on the balls of your feet. But not your toes. I’d imagine that’s how you walk in your other form. You’ll move faster that way, more capably.” She shifted her boot around Keeva’s back ankle, moving her legs just slightly wider as well. “Shoulder width apart…”

~

Keeva nodded, mind flashing with the same things that had been repeating there since the masquerade. Fire, screams, feet frantically pounding against the stone, the smell of so much blood, the rotten acrid smell stinging her nose. She shook her head, trying to stop the memories. “It was overwhelming.” A statement made more to herself To reassure that running had been the right thing to do.

“Feeling? I don’t—“ The dragoness stopped herself. Animal magi were something she had heard about since being around humans and elves more. She knew how they could connect to animals but she never thought about the magic she held in that way. Perhaps it wasn’t exactly the same but now that she considered it, she could always reach out with the magic she felt humming through her, in all the living things around them. Closing her eyes, she took a moment and focused on the salmon again. Her stomach echoing their hunger, their excitement as they surged towards the scent of blood in the water. “Hunger.” She spoke excitedly. A grin twitched at her lips and she pushed passed to the cats in the trees, hearts beating fast. “Fear.” The wolves, surrounded by their pack. “Family.” When she opened her eyes, they looked curiously at the elf. Remembering the way the wolf submitted to her presence. “You have animal magic, right?” 

Keeva stiffened as Gwen spoke again, drawing and holding out the dagger to her. A frown flirted across her face but she took the blade hesitantly. She wasn’t a stranger to violence, but it was no friend. Certainly wasn’t accustomed to wielding anything but her own claws in this form either. Her grip tightened around the hilt and she nodded at the other woman’s words. She didn’t want to always be so afraid. To constantly be running. To be killed while doing nothing. She looked back at Gwen. “I don’t normally use weapons.”

-

Gwen remembered that feeling too. Knowing you were a few minutes too late, knowing that you were burying your dead because you couldn’t do enough. And whether it was your fault or not, you couldn’t stop the guilt from eating away at your soul. It was as if the universe was screaming your failures in your face daily, from the moment you failed your loved ones, until your last day and you’d never get a moment’s reprieve. And who knew what happened in the After? Perhaps you’d be faced with all of your mistakes and failures there too. That seemed like it would be Gwen’s fate.

The elf watched, a smirk slowly creeping upwards onto her lips as the dragon began connecting the dots and realizing some of her own potential. Magic, for Gwen at least, had never been about what she could do with it, of the things she could make happen. Magic was about nudging something along, projecting calm when a pack of wolves needed to, or tugging them in the direction she needed them to go. Keeva began prattling off the emotions and base needs of the animals in the forests around them and Gwen nodded, she was a quick learner at least. “Good… it’s more difficult to apply that to humans, elves, dragons… but… it’s the same methods.” She shrugged, “Yea… I’ve never bonded with an animal but I have it.”

She disagreed when Gwen said she was helping and protecting them, something that the young wildling wouldn’t utter outloud. They didn’t need it, not from a deer. If a bear, or other hunters, yes. Indi would lay her life on the line for that. But no, she told them that she was a friend, and that they had the same goal. She’d make a deal with the spirit of the land and with them that the wolves could take the doe, and they the stag. Something they seemed content with. 

“You wouldn’t trip down a ravine, someone would push you. Otherwise you’d see it coming,” she pointedly said you to remind Gwen that she was better than that. She made it this far and death would not be so easy for either of them, a fact Indi is all too aware of in her personal life. The gods kept her walking the earth for some reason, as frustrating as it is. An action that taunts her. 

“I met another elf recently. He could speak to all animals,” She grows quiet picking through what was coming to her in waves from the wolves. “It makes me feel lucky that I can only feel them and not speak to them.” Not feeling them might be the worst feeling she could imagine. They were the heart beat to this forest and a reminder of her connection to them. She knows they are aware of them stepping closer, within range to shoot and quickly her bow is in her hands and drawn. She feels the wolves tense, ready to jump. The deer are quartered away, distracted by the wolves, and would offer her as perfect as a shot as she could get. She pulls back the arrow to a whispered prayer of flying straight and true to her target of vital organs, the quickest and most humane way she knew to hunt.

-

“You’re probably right.” She grinned, chuckling. Indi had a wicked sense of reality when she was speaking about different things. Always observant, always pragmatic, and with a biting lack of bull shit. Sometimes Gwen wondered if somehow one of her sisters had gone off and started the wildling tribe Indi was a part of as that same sarcasm and plain-spokenness had run in their family. “I imagine I’ll die in a bar fight… that or… I dunno some other hunter will just murder me over a kill.”

Gwen nodded, she didn’t know what speaking to them would be like exactly, her abilities manifested a bit differently. “I don’t hear them in any language elves or humans or dragons speak… I just sort of stretch out for them and I get images and feelings and I just… sort of know what they need me to. That’s how it’s always been for me, at least.” They quieted as they drew closer to the pack and their prey. Gwen had her bow in hand, knocking an arrow but she would let Indi take the shot and make the kill, whichever one she went for. Gwen was only ready in case something went wrong and the wolves jumped. But even then, she knew she could probably calm them before anything happened. Indi’s arrow aimed true and the stag crumpled to the ground as her arrow met some organ. Lungs, probably. Gwen closed her eyes for a moment, pushing aside the last few fleeting feelings of fear and pain as she prayed for the stag’s spirit to find some peace in the After.

~

“Yes, my tribe didn’t move beyond our swamp, didn’t need to. Never got many visitors beyond the occasional trader either.” Part of Keeva always believed that is what helped keep her safe. If she didn’t hear about the threat perhaps they wouldn’t hear about her and she would go unnoticed. But Gwen’s next words dismissed that thought. If other tribes had been attacked, then not even wildlings were safe. “It seems they are targeting dragons in general. But I have smelled that before, when the humans were attacked. Dark magic.” She glanced in the direction of Glasswater. The sulfurous and copper smell that permeated the air the night of the attack had stuck in her nose for longer than she would have liked. But Keeva hadn’t missed Gwen’s mention of her own tribe and the look she had seen earlier made a bit more sense. “I am sorry to hear about your tribe.” She added quietly, not wanting to bring up something that might upset the elf but feeling the need to say something. 

But something about the way the other wildling described the scent stirred her memory. Blood and brimstone. It was a smell she realized she had caught before, not nearly as strong or as seemingly…dark? If you could describe a scent as such. But similar nonetheless. A tinge of copper and sulfur tainted the air when the tribe had attempted the rituals Keeva didn’t want to participate in. Again, it wasn’t nearly as strong but… she wondered if there was any connection, she didn’t know nearly enough about low magic to make that assumption without looking into it further.

Keeva followed Gwen’s prompting, focusing once more past the noise of the brook. The bubbling returned before the splashing picked up once more. The dragoness spoke as she picked out the different sounds. “Another group spawning further down the creek…” Calls from hungry beaks as larger wing beats approached. “Starlings feeding their young…” The scratch of claws, tearing bark in their pursuit of higher ground. The huffs, yips, and soft pads of the wolves tumbling over one another. “Forest-cats and wolves.” Keeva had already turned her nose to the wind on instinct and she nodded when Gwen spoke of smelling them. The bitter iron of the skinned deer, the oaken and leather scent of the woman nearby, the faint smell of the animals who had come to drink from the creek and were long gone. The wind carried the scent of those further in the wood to her. The chalky scent of wild turkeys, the predator scent of the wolves and the blood on their snouts from the recent kill. Even the heavy thick scent of a bear much further down stream reached her, moving away after a catch of salmon. “Yes, my nose was always better than my ears.” 

-

Dark magic, low magic, ritual magic, so many different names that amounted to the same thing. Rituals that were originally meant to tap into the forces of nature and its balance and tilt it just slightly in your favor but they had been so distorted and changed over time in different parts of the world that the magic had seemed to change with it. That’s why it smelled so much like brimstone and blood. It was wrong, the magic was wrong and done with blood rituals. It wasn’t natural. “Probably kept you safe… being so far in the swamp. But if you ever smell the dark magic… don’t even try to fight just run. You’ll know when… when it’s strong and you can’t escape the smell… just run.” Gwen frowned, shaking her head. Her tribe was long gone but she still didn’t want to give up searching for them or a way to find where they might have been taken. “I’ve only smelled it a few times… and a few times since… but never as strong as it was on the wind after they attacked the humans… and I was nowhere near it.”

Gwen took to instructing Keeva once more, deciding to push those memories far away from her mind for the time being. It wasn’t the time or the place to reminisce and dwell on the past. She’d focused on her missing tribe members for so long that if she could do other things, maybe do some good, maybe help a dragon where she hadn’t managed to before, then she felt it was appropriate to delay her hunt and dealing with the wolves to help Keeva.

“Good…” Gwen began again, listening to Keeva describing the different animals. “Now what are they feeling? If you can get a sense of what they’re feeling before you come up on them… you can avoid a fight or a hunt. Or catch them off guard.” Gwen closed her eyes, focusing on the forests around them, the starlings, the wolves, the cats they were treeing, the fish, the bears. All with different base emotions. They weren’t as complex as humans or elves or dragons and it was always easier to understand them than any of the speaking-variety of animals. Hunger, desperation, fear, more hunger, freedom, family.

Gwen took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. “Now… about learning to fight…” Gwen said suddenly, pulling a dagger from her belt and flipping it to hold the hilt out to Keeva. “If you do need to fight and can’t run… you need to be good enough to subdue them so you can get away…”

That was the hard part. She could push, urge them to only go after the stag, but they didn’t have to listen to her. They have made that aware time and time again. But there was a natural order to things, and they had to follow it too. “Sometimes I feel like they don’t want to hear me.” There would always be hate and self doubt filling her cells up. “Sometimes what they feel drowns me out,” she continues with a frown.

It was a horrible crossing, and she had done it twice only in her life so far. She got sick and clung to railings. Waves crashed over and she felt a chill to her bones, sometime that put Northland winters to shame because it was laced with fear. “I have heard that drowning is.. a peaceful way to die once you give up.” But it’s still not something she wanted. “But a ship was the cheapest way. And I don’t take up much space.”

-

Gwen knew what it was like to drown in your own despair and rage. She’d been doing just that for hundreds of years. But she’d learned to push it and fold it and beat it down until it was compact enough to store it away. Every once in a while, that little box she managed to shove all of her pain in popped open, but it got easier over the years to manipulate it and ignore it. So maybe what Indi needed wasn’t ignoring the wolves’ feelings, maybe she needed to embrace them. Though that brought up a few questions regarding her talents with controlling her berserking. “Use what they feel. Let it push you. If they are scared or hungry, remind them you’re helping and protecting them. Not the other way around. Wolves respond to familiarity and compassion. You have both in spades.”

“I’d really rather never find out. I’ll die in the mountains somewhere… probably tripping down a ravine or something. Painful and screaming.” The elf and the little berserker continued trekking through the forest, eventually coming to the tree line. Light began filtering more brightly as the trees cleared out and they could see the pack of young wolves cornering the two deer. Gwen would let Indi make the first moves but if she needed help or couldn’t control the wolves, she would step in. “Your call.”

tw: graphic blood

~

Keeva stiffened at Gwen’s words slightly.  Rare? Killed? “I had no idea.” The words tumbled from her mouth. She had never met any of her kind quite like her, but she thought that was just due to her secluded nature. If dragons like her had been killed because of what they could do, did that make her a bigger target? Were people still hunting specific kinds of dragons? She was pulled from her morbid thoughts as Gwen pulled the last of the hide free.

The dragoness twisted her mouth thoughtfully as she watched the other wildling climb up and down the tree. “Hmm, like Death Rites, but for prey…” The Fearmoss had their own traditions surrounding death. Rituals, prayers, and offerings that ushered tribe members who had passed to whatever lay beyond this world. Keeva supposed she believed in something beyond but had never been one to commit to any solid belief of an ‘After’. Even so, the idea of paying a final respect or a final thank you to a life that would help sustain yours was something she could appreciate. “I quite like that.”

A bit of a scowl pulled Keeva’s pale features. The indignant part of her wanted to snap back that she had smelled her and the wolves, but she moved to the very edge of the water instead. Gwen was right, she had picked up on the scent and sounds far too late, only seconds before the wolves had approached. You have to be more careful. If it had been anyone who truly meant her harm, that mistake could have cost her dearly. 

The rolling din of the creek surrounded her as she tried to focus in on it. Following the bubbling with her senses, her ears twitched at the noise as well. It wove deeper into the woods, curving slightly before…there- a break in the pattern. From about a mile away, came the more frenzied splashing of fish breaking the surface, surging over one another as they fought against the current. “Yes, just after the bend.”

-

Gwen watched Keeva carefully for a few moments before shaking her head. “You stayed mostly to your clan… tribe… whatever? Then? Word doesn’t reach wildlings unless they get travelers often.” Gwen had never stayed in one place for too long, even before her own tribe was wiped out. So they were more up to date on the status quo than most wildling tribes. But even she didn’t know exactly why the rebels were targeting dragons or what they planned on doing with them. She sighed, not wanting to dredge up too many memories but Keeva did need to know how to avoid the rebels. “I don’t know what they want but I know rebels target tribes that have dragons with them… my own included. If you smell brimstone and blood… run… get whoever you can out. I don’t know what it is but I know that’s what their… magic smells like?”

To Gwen, even as an elf, death was natural and inevitable. She was a little surprised she’d made it this long considering how roughly she lived. But she supposed she had her Vasharren blood to thank. She was brittle until she wasn’t, human until she healed faster, elven until she was injured. She wouldn’t want to know what it was like to be human though and even more fragile and delicate. She wondered if Keeva’s tribe had elaborate ceremonies for their dead the way they did in cities. Her tribe had always built pyres and burned the bodies. It was easier, quicker, less to deal with, burying them seemed like such a waste of earth.

-

She pauses her walk when Gwen asks, and finds her eyes closing, ears straining. “The breeze is distracting me but,” she sighs, “I can hear the wolves still, and they’re hunting him also. They’re trying to corner them against a ridge.” From what she could understand, at least. She wished it came in sentences, instead of broken words. She thinks that they think that Indi and Gwen are helping them, or the other way around. 

“I did leave once,” she admits, she’s unsure if her tribe thought her missing or dead, but they barely reacted when she came back. She wants to say she didn’t miss them but.. they were all she had and as much as she hated them, she belonged to them. “I don’t like the sea, it felt like the waves wanted to swallow me whole.”

-

Gwen would leave the choice to Indi, to kill the stag or leave it be. Indi’s sensibilities were correct, that the mother shouldn’t be harmed if it had a fawn but wolves didn’t live by the same rules humans or elves or dragons did. Wolves took what they needed when they needed it. “Mm… good. Can you talk to them at the same time, have you ever tried?” She asked, gently prying into the feelings and instincts of the wolves and the stag herself. There was another with him, a doe, and they both reeked of panic and fear.

~

“I can produce shadow. I breathe it. Shape it and walk within it as well. And I…” Keeva hesitated, unsure if her telepathy was something she would ever actually consider using in a fight. Maybe if she was truly desperate but she couldn’t stomach the thought of using it aggressively in any other circumstance. Switching directions, the dragoness continued. “I have been told I am rather fast but other than that-” She ended with a shrug. ‘It’s unfair that the gods granted a dragon such long legs.’ Clio used to tease her. Even without her shadow magic, her long strides could eat ground quickly. Years of practice chasing down prey in the tangle of the swamp had refined the uncoordinated movements of her youth. She could run, dodge, and weave among the twisted trees, roots, and the uneven terrain with ease. 

Eyes carefully watching Gwen’s movements, she took note of any differences in the way she dressed the doe. Keeva was a quick study, her anxiety making her hyper focus on details, though that sometimes was to her detriment. She nodded in agreement with the other woman’s words, settling to a knee nearby. Even if you didn’t believe in gods or spirits, it was disrespectful to the animal to waste parts that could be used-at least in Keeva’s opinion. 

“Is that what you said earlier? A prayer? I couldn’t understand the language.” She had assumed it was elvish but she wasn’t sure, she had never bothered learning anything other than the common tongue and drakonai. The young dragon found herself wondering what sort of wildlings offered prayers to the creatures of the forest they slayed. But the brief glimpse of emotion she had seen earlier kept the question behind her teeth. 

-

“Ah…” Gwen stated, continuing to work on the deer. As strips of the deer’s skin were pulled off, she laid them aside, she’d trim them up and get them ready to dry and cure later. For now, she continued her work. “A shadow walker. Fairly rare… don’t see many dragons with that kind of ability. Most were killed before I was even born cos’ you can’t be tracked easy and you can get away fast… if you can use it.” She looked at Keeva, really took a good look. She was lanky and long, and she could see why she’d be fast. But running could only do so much for you in a fight. As she finished skinning the doe, she piled the pelt and skins together, scaling the tree far enough up so the skin could hang on a sunlit branch without attracting too many predators who might smell the blood.

When Gwen climbed back down the tree, she looked to Keeva as she asked about what she’d spoken earlier. “It was Vae… or at least how my tribe used to speak it.” She shrugged. It wasn’t really any of Keeva’s business what she’d said or hadn’t said but she knew the girl would just keep asking questions. “We say a pray to help guide the spirits of whatever we hunt to the After… so that they might find peace there where they didn’t here.”

“Yes, teacher,” she drawls. She should have known that Gwen would turn it in to a learning experience, but Indi had spent the last few years alone, and honing what abilities she had. She shrugs, trying to avoid the eyeroll that wants to join it, “He went left, met another along the way. I won’t kill it if it’s his mate.” There was a natural order to things, and was raised to primarily hunt the males. Mothers had a lot of work to do, and if there was any fawns involved, even if they may be a few months old, Indi wasn’t going to take that away. 

She’s quiet as she continues to step in line, ears focused on the sounds of the woods. She preferred the chill of the woods, but had started to travel in the recent year and saw…  more of the world that she wanted to see.

-

Indi was a small wonder, a human with almost as good of tracking abilities as she had, but she was an animal magi and a berserker too. She was still so young but she’d trained hard and learned as much as she could and in so many ways, Gwen felt proud of Indi. It wasn’t as if the girl was in her tribe or had any relation to her but she was proud nonetheless. Gwen wordlessly followed Indi, keeping her senses open as they tracked the animals. Animal magi occasionally had senses more heightened than normal humans, as did berserkers but she’d never tested Indi’s. “Can you hear them?” She asked suddenly, quiet as she listened for the soft clunking on their hooves against twigs and stones a few miles off.

After they’d walked a ways further, Gwen took the opportunity to test Indi in a different way. “Have you ever thought about leaving? Traveling around?”

…

At this moment, there was only one person who Avitej wanted to please, and keep pleased.  But saying that was still too…momentous for Avi to speak out loud to anyone other than Ainsley or Erin, so instead he smiled.  “Now that’s the sort of tutelage I can get behind.  I’m rubbish at schooling, but I’d be the best student in your class, I would.  Hand-on-training, that’s me.  One can never get enough education in that department.”

He looked up at her, surprised that Gweneth spoke nicely about him.  It was unwarranted and Avi knew better than to acknowledge it, make her regret her words.  After all,  Avi loved hearing it. “Power is the most potent aphrodisiac, I find.  Even on the ugliest, sorriest sod.”

Avi listened, not realizing that this was a tale that Gweneth didn’t share with just anyone.  That she deliberately decided to tell him, if only because in a little while they’d cease to have any relevance in each other’s lives.  He found it an interesting tale regardless.

Especially when he heard about the dragons.

“Were the dragons captured or killed, do you recall?”  Avi asked her.  “I’m sorry to hear about your tribe’s demise, how brutal if sounds.  And the rebels, yes.  A rather generic term for them, but I suppose that’s the entire point.  If they had a defined name, they could be hunted.   You’d know a thing or two about hunting, of course.  The rebels who killed your people, I’m assuming they were elves as well?  Did they leave anything worth tracking?”

Avi’s mouth tightened slightly at the frustrating thought.  He’d had it brewing in his mind for a while now: elves and their blasted long lives.  Ample time to design and develop rebel factions across Vailar.  Elves hunting down dragons; and humans caught in between with their frail mortality.

“Oh right.  That. Well,”  Avi was glad to know Gweneth just meant, well, exactly what Avi had just been thinking about.  Humans and their mortality.  “In that case, I shall call you ‘madame narwhal’ then.”

The doctor came forward and handed Avi his dagger, which Avi cleaned.  The sailors hauled the healed man off the ship, and Avi thanked his doctor, then finished his rum before he spoke to Gweneth again. 

“He’s alive and has promised not to cause any further provocation.  You may resume drink in peace tonight, and I suppose this is where we must part ways, Madame Narwhal.”

-

Gwen didn’t find the need to compliment or encourage people very often but then, she wasn’t around people that often either. But there were a few things that could loosen up even the hardest of hearts. A good drink, a good fight, and a good fuck. She wasn’t looking for the later and she’d had the first two. Playful banter wasn’t something she usually did either, but knowing she might never see the sea-lord again had loosened her spirits somewhat.

At least, until she began talking about her tribe and he started asking questions. And perhaps she shouldn’t have told him anything but again, she was never going to see this human again. What was the harm? He traveled as much as she did, had seen as much of the world, she might have had centuries on him but that meant little if you were comparing experiences.

“Most were killed… some… I don’t know what happened to them. There were a few of us who were bonded. My magic doesn’t run that deep, and I wonder if there are other lands out there that… they simply flew to. Unexplored by anyone of Vailen or Elysi or Loqoala…” Gwen gave a shrug, she wondered briefly why he was asking her more pointed questions. Perhaps he’d known people that had been killed by the rebels, too. Maybe they were a bigger problem than she’d ever realized.

“No… I tried tracking them for months after it happened but I…” She shook her head, leaning against the railing. Something struck her, some memory surfaced and she pursed her lips, her brows knitting together in frustration. “No actually… every time I’ve encountered any rebels they have a distinct… smell. Most do, at least. Not all, some are just… well anyways…” She tried to think of a way to relate this to him, to tell him what to look out for.

“It’s brimstone… copper and brimstone. It was all over the camp when… they attacked us. It’s similar to low magic, but low magic isn’t as bad or… as strong I suppose. The rebels though, they almost always smell like brimstone and blood.” She looked up, facing northward, where the capital would roughly be. “I smelled it again all over the air after that attack on the capital. Then I found the refugee camp. I’ve only been to the desert way down south once or twice but... smells like it down there too, so I stay away.”