We traveled through the night, and I began to think that we’d escaped safely–that the merchants wouldn’t find us or guide others to our trails. The faint rumblings of thunder on a clear day the next afternoon disabused me of that notion. As night fell, I was about to push my people to continue trekking through the night, but first I decided to explain my thoughts.
“That what you’re hearing is the sign of a High Speaker. They’re close.” I spoke to my elites as I called attention to the low roars of distant thunder. Percral cocked his head, and with a thought began to channel his magic, the light crackles of electricity and the smell of ozone filling the air. “Like that.” I conceded, “But they’re miles away from us. You’ve never used magic that large or powerful before, and that’s just the sound of someone moving. That’s not someone fighting.”
“Wait, what?”
“Are they cowardly fighters?”
Rulac and Wisterl’s questions overlapped each other, the male disbelieving and the female excited. “The High Speakers,” I answered, “have access to magic like you’ve never seen, or perhaps even imagined. I don’t know which there will be, but Windspeakers can Call lightning from the heavens, or bolster their speed to a dozen times our own. Wavespeakers can shift entire rivers to smash down on their enemies, or heal their allies from the brink of death. Flamespeakers can create towering pillars of flames, or rouse hundreds to their cause. Earthspeakers can become armored juggernauts of death, or raise mountains to protect themselves. Soulspeakers can forge connections with any living creature, or bolster the spirits and strengths of dozens to twice their original power.” I let my voice fade away as my keelish listened to my words. I continued to speak once I thought they had finally begun to understand how serious a danger the High Speakers posed.
“We can’t say that whoever is accompanying the High Windspeaker is on that same level, or if they have been hunting us since we destroyed the humans’ subjugation force. I certainly hope that the Windspeaker is the only High Speaker, but if there are more, I can’t say how many we’ll lose to their assault.”
“Why would they attack us? We killed one of them so easily, so aren’t we a threat?” Took asked, but before I could answer, Sybil did for me.
“If there was a pack of quoll that hunted an entire brood of keelish hatchlings to the last, what would be your reaction, Took?”
Took thought about it for a moment, then answered, “I would leave them for the next brood to try to hunt and prove themselves. The dead were careless, weak, or unworthy.” Sybil paused, then after adjusting her question, asked again, “If Trai was slain by a small pack of creatures, what would you do?”
“Then they would die, if not by Foire’s claw, then by my fangs.” Took didn’t try to keep the threatening snarl from her voice. Sybil flared her frills in acknowledgement and asked Foire, “And you? What would you do?”
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“I would hunt them to the last. There would be no mercy, no hesitation, and no honor in their deaths.” The vehemence in his words was belied by the cold in his stature. Foire would do exactly that, and I suspected most of the swarm would go with him in support of vengeance wrought in honor of his little one.
“The humans see those weaker than themselves like something to be protected, not nurtured into something more. Like a helpless child that needs its parents to always give it care. Since we have killed the weak, both last night and in our battle near our previous home, the humans consider us to be a threat to their weak. Thus, they will put forth their best efforts to cull us.”
“Thank you Sybil, for explaining it in a way that others can understand.” I said. “We have been escaping from a possibility until now. We are fleeing from reality from today on. The High Speakers are here, and they want to kill every last one of us.” My elites flared their frills, trying to say that they understood what I was saying. It only took a couple hours of continued journey through the temperate forest for them to actually begin to understand.
There was a brief scream of keelish out in the forest, where one of the hunting parties searched for something to feed the swarm. After a mere 10 seconds, though, the screams stopped. Foire cocked his head, and was about to go searching for what had happened, but I grabbed his arm and forced him to stay nearby.
“It’s too late for them. The High Speaker is beginning the hunt. Call all the hunting parties in, no reason to let the hunter pick us off one by one.”
A couple of Redael’s most staunch followers, long having begun to grate under my command and cautious actions, declared, “They aren’t as powerful as you say! There’s nothing that strong in this world, or else we wouldn’t be able to continue living. They would hunt every last one of us! Rulac, lead us and we’ll hunt them down!”
He flicked his tail dismissively. “What the Alpha says, I does. Not much more to it. If you wanna go, you won’t hear me stoppin’ you.” Then, Rulac looked at me and nodded in solidarity before continuing to follow my lead in the march. With their greatest hope for a supporter holding back, the pack of 30 keelish with a couple of khatif among them began to lose their courage, but then, Toak, a brood Alpha who’d enjoyed his power under the previous regime, snarled an order to his pack.
“We’ll prove how keelish we are! Alpha, we’ll bring you this ‘hunter’s head!” The insubordination would have set my hackles to rising, if I hadn’t been convinced he was just leading his pack to their deaths. It would maybe serve to slow the High Speakers down, though, so I dismissed them with a magnanimous wave of my hand. Seeing my tacit approval, Toak’s pack trotted off into the night with nothing more than another growling command. I shook my head before giving the command to redouble our speed.
“Are you sure?” Rulac asked as I began to lead the run through the forest. The leaf litter underfoot cushioned my feet from the occasional sharp rock and twisted root, and I continued my mostly blind jog, ignoring the exhaustion that filled every fiber of my being.
“Listen.” was all the response I gave, even when Rulac pressed and asked again and again. Finally, after ten minutes, the brief booming of thunder and the not-too distant flashes of lightning punctuated the panicked cries of keelish, but it was too late for the fools. It wasn’t even a minute before all sounds of struggle faded, and the forest resumed its previous quiet. Now, though, for the first time, the swarm truly believed me when I commanded them to flee for their lives.
And still, the hunter stalked and followed. And hunted.