Dawn and Ankou settled in seamlessly at the former Kharlin village. The next days were spent with sewing, setting up an alchemy lab, hunting and fishing. Dawn had picked her new skill at last and looked forward to resume brewing medicines and tinctures. She roamed around the village environment to collect useful herbs and roots for some basic medicines. Marja had taught her several recipes when she was still at Greenriver village. The first berries started to ripen as well. For now she only collected enough for their meals. But she would have to pick a bunch of them and set them up to dry soon. They had been lucky to get the Kharlin village as their base, but during summer and autumn Dawn would have to prepare enough provisions to last them over the coming winter. Though Dawn didn’t even know how much exactly would be needed.
During their excursion outside, they found several spots where the Kharlins had planted vegetable patches. All of them were concealed and the plants were always growing in small numbers. A plant here, two or three a dozen meters away. It was easily apparent the Kharlins had tried to minimize the obvious signs of habitation. Dawn was grateful for the bounty. All in all, they spent quite an idyllic time. There were no traces of any demons and the beasts they encountered from afar could easily be evaded with stealth. The only thing marring these peaceful days were the dark dreams which were haunting Dawn. This was an entirely new experience for her, as she had never been prone to nightmares.
She dreamt of the underground city. Not as a dark and lifeless ruin, as she had experienced it in real life, but as a thriving city with people bustling around. The ceiling was studded with blue lights, like a sea of twinkling blue stars against the darkness of a night sky. The rubble in the center of the settlement had turned into flourishing restaurants and taverns, in between market stalls peddling everything from food to clothes, jewellery and weapons. The people in the streets were wearing colourful, richly decorated garments in unfamiliar styles. Though she dreamt of everyday scenes, the ambiance had a haunted quality, as if disaster was just waiting around the corner, and the people living there just didn’t know it yet. When Dawn woke from these dreams she was disturbed and frightened.
After she thought about it, she decided the feeling of a catastrophe waiting to happen was caused most likely by her knowledge that the city had been struck by disaster and crushed in the war with the gray demons.
In other dreams she found herself in the old alchemy laboratory that she had encountered in the caves. In those she was studying runes and preparing a runic circle on the ground, an intense feeling of pressing urgency and weariness her constant companion. When she woke from these dreams a mood of powerful sadness was gripping her.
“I guess that story from the echo stone must have impressed me more than I thought, Ankou,” she said one morning after she had spent a restless night with jumbled dreams again. “I keep dreaming of the underground city and the laboratory.”
It was raining heavily that morning, and Dawn decided that there was no need for them to go out in such inclement weather. They would stay inside and she would spend her time brewing up some more medicines. She missed her mentor, now that she had time for alchemy. She had no books and no teacher here, so it was difficult to study the subject further. She guessed she would have to do some experimenting. Then she remembered the books she had taken from the old laboratory. They were far too advanced to be of real use for a beginner like her, but she could take a better look at them, at least.
She fetched all the books she had taken from the laboratory, flipped the first one open and slowly thumbed through the pages. Sighing she laid it aside again. It might just as well be written in a foreign language. Everything was gibberish to her. The same was true for most of the other books she had taken from there. Finally, she picked out two that might be at least of limited use. She would start to study these, otherwise she just needed to do some experimenting with the herbs she had collected. When she was through with all the alchemical tomes, she started to look at the volumes that concerned themselves with runes. That was an entirely foreign subject to her. She doubted that anyone in the whole village of Greenriver had any knowledge about runes. They seemed esoteric and arcane to her, but after listening to the story from the echo stone she had to admit to intense curiosity regarding the subject.
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She opened the first book full of expectation and grimaced. Complicated diagrams and equations were adorning the pages. “Well, that is not likely to teach me anything.” Setting the tome aside, she opened the next one. Here, each page held some exquisitely drawn runes accompanied by a description. “Now, that one might actually be helpful.” Dawn muttered. Still, even with descriptions the runes looked complicated and foreign. As she kept turning the pages, some of the images gave her a feeling of déjà vu, though she was absolutely certain she had never even caught a glimpse of these runes before.
Shaking herself, she left the books and stood up to start preparing their next meal. “Might just as well do something useful,” she grumbled. A moment later she was surprised by the notice that she had acquired the skill ‘Runic Magic’. “Now where did that come from suddenly?” Dawn exclaimed. She just had taken a look at some pictures. Hardly enough to learn a new skill. And runic magic? She didn’t know the first thing about that. Could that possibly be a mistake? But when she called up her status, the skill was indeed present in her general skill list.
“That is a pretty strange way to learn a skill,” Dawn told Ankou later, shaking her head. “I was just looking at a few runes in that book, and hey presto, new skill. Not that I would know the first thing about what to do with that one.” The cat blinked at her lazily and then rolled up for a nap. Dawn would have liked to follow suit, her full stomach making her sleepy. But she had promised herself to clear up directly after each meal. It would be far too easy to lapse into complacency here and let the place fall into disarray. She couldn’t afford to let that happen.
Sighing deeply, she looked up at the skylights. Apparently it was still raining outside. Dawn felt itchy and confined. During the last weeks she had gotten used to spending the biggest part of her day outside. But it made no sense to get soaked through in the heavy rain without the least necessity.
As she was in the process of cleaning up, she suddenly heard noises outside. It sounded like horses and, were that voices? Ankou had woken up now, too. Expression alert, the cat was clearly listening intensely. The lynx stood gracefully and approached the exit. “ Be careful,” Dawn whispered, following closely behind him. They both stopped and waited directly behind the rocks which covered the entrance to the village.
“Are you sure Levi said we would meet around here?” a gravelly disembodied voice asked. “I told you already, we were supposed to meet him at the camp where we were staying last night.” A deeper voice answered curtly. “So he is late, big deal.” The first one replied. “I don’t like it. We are already arriving here later than we agreed.” A horse snorted outside, the men obviously riding slowly through the rocky area adjacent to the cave. “He should have been waiting for us.”
The first voice had an impatient tone now. “A thousand things could have happened here in the wilds. Maybe some beasts got to him at last. We should go on alone.” The second speaker scoffed: “Levi is an experienced hunter, and he was with Jonas and Cam, too. They could have handled beasts aplenty. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
Dawn was stunned. She remembered only too well the hunters she had attacked in a mindless rage, when they had talked about killing Kharma. It seemed they had friends who wanted to meet them. She held her breath and prayed that the men outside wouldn’t notice the hidden entrance to the village. Promising any god that would listen to her that she would take care to disguise the entrance to the underground location better if only they wouldn’t let them find her now. She had a feeling she would not want to meet these men. Dawn certainly hadn’t cared for their friends. And she was alone with Ankou now. They were lucky it was raining heavily. Any traces they had left outside during the last few days would have been washed away by the water. And visibility was generally low with the rain coming down hard.
“Let’s get back to the camp site. This search is pointless and I’m soaked through already.” The first voice grumbled. “You may be right. Let’s return. Maybe they will arrive today. But if not, we will search for them again tomorrow. They can’t have all vanished without a trace.” The second speaker assented.
Slowly, the sounds of their horses died away in the distance.