Dawn was startled out of her sleep by a loud peal of thunder. For a moment she was disoriented, but she got her bearings when she saw Ankou lying at her side. It was starting to rain now, single fat drops plinking down on the earth around her. Most of the downpour was barred by the canopy, but a part of it got through.
“Seems like the night ends now,” she grumbled, peeling herself out of her bedroll, still tired but discerning that she would be unable to sleep with the thunder and the rain coming down. Packing her bedroll away in her storage ring, she took out her dark green coat and bundled herself up. Lightning was lighting up the sky around her in irregular intervals, thunderclaps following soon after. She sat and watched the spectacle for a while, fascinated. When the thunderstorm started to abate, and Dawn was no longer distracted by it, she realized that she was starving.
“I’m hungry enough to eat a bear, Ankou. Now that I think of it, I haven’t eaten anything for more than a day. And I have no food at all with me. Time to do something about it. I’ve still got that fishing line Nathan gave me. Let’s go fishing. I bet you know a good place for that.”
Ankou blinked at her for a moment and then started to move away from their shelter slowly, his ears halfway flattened. Obviously, he wasn’t best pleased to set out in the middle of the night, and in the pouring rain at that. But now that Dawn had actually noticed her empty stomach, she couldn’t just ignore it anymore.
The lynx led her to a small lake, quite a distance away from their camp. Dawn sat on a rock, bundled in her coat, and cast her line out. Not even the rain could dim her mood today, being free from Aaron’s compulsion and having reunited with her companion, she felt on top of the world. Ankou had found a bit of shelter under some trees in the vicinity after they arrived, and gone to sleep.
Maybe it was the rain or the early morning hour, but the fish were biting like crazy. In no time at all, she had caught half a dozen graylings. She gutted them and removed the heads and now only needed to find a properly dry and sheltered place to grill them. That, too, she accomplished with Ankou’s help. She was very careful to keep her fire low and hardly visible, using some tricks the rangers had taught her. The meal, though simple, tasted heavenly. Perhaps because she couldn’t remember ever being that hungry before. Between Ankou and her, they decimated four of the fishes. She stored the remaining two in her ring, determined to never again find herself without food and water. This was the second time she had been caught in such a fix. Preparation obviously was king here.
“So what do we do now, Ankou?” she asked. “Shall we spy on the soldiers from the distance? I’m curious what they are going to do now, without a guide to the city.”
The lynx seemed to be a bit dubious, but showed no stringent objections. “Let’s sneak up to them, then. I’ll find myself a nice sturdy tree to climb and will keep an eye on them from that lookout.
Now that her stomach was appeased she wanted to keep watch on Aaron and his entourage. Keep your enemy close and all that. When she had been on her own, she had lacked the courage, only wanting to hide and be left alone. But with Ankou at her side, she felt strong enough.
It turned out that her plan to find a tree and use it as a lookout to watch the soldiers needed some work. When they arrived in the vicinity of the men’s camp site, it was already vacated. Apparently Aaron had given up trying to find Dawn. Had he cut his losses and left the area? Dawn rather suspected that he was trying to find the city on his own. He was already in the vicinity, so the only thing he had to loose was time. During her time with him, in answer to his questions, she had given him some directions from the Kharlin village to the caved in entrance to the underground city.
Cautiously they approached the abandoned camp site. The party’s trail was not hard to follow and it led indeed in the direction of the Kharlin village. Dawn and Ankou set out in pursuit.
“Might as well see what they’re about.” Dawn muttered. “I don’t trust that bastard Aaron as fas as I can throw him.”
In the meantime, a dreadful thought had crossed her mind. If Aaron was successful in finding the city and liberating the books of ancient Raknavor from the stasis spell, he might get his greedy hands on some tome teaching him blood magic. The practice of it had apparently been forbidden in Raknavor too, but the man from the echo stone obviously had knowledge of it and he had to have learned it somewhere.
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Dawn was fiercely determined that Aaron could never be allowed to obtain knowledge of blood magic. He had no scruples, her abduction and subsequent time under his compulsion had proven that well enough. He would use anything which promised to make him more powerful without second thought. The man from the echo stone had used blood magic with the best of intentions, trying to save his wife. And just look at how that had turned out. It was too dangerous to use for anyone, let alone a creature of avarice like Aaron.
Of course, the most likely outcome of Aaron actually finding the city would be death by demon. Dawn was not convinced that his troupe of men at arms would be successful in a fight against the spiders. But maybe she underestimated the men. After all, she had never watched them in a fight.
As predicted, the men’s trail led to the Kharlin village. It was obvious the soldiers had found the place, but they hadn’t stayed. Their tracks continued in the direction of the ravine where the original entrance to the city had been located.
Dawn and Ankou soldiered on, carefully. Dawn kept her stealth up as long as she could, and took care to hide herself by more mundane means when she needed to recover her stamina.
They arrived at the gorge and heard the soldiers talking before they could see them. With extreme caution, they inched their way forward. Aaron’s men at arms were milling around in the gorge. Their horses had been left on higher ground, just a little distance away from Dawn and Ankou now. Two of the men had stayed with them, probably to guard them against beast attacks. They were sitting on the ground looking bored, sporadically one of them got up to walk a circle around the horses and take a look around.
The companions gave them a wide berth all the same, finding their way through the rocky surroundings and climbing down the gorge quite a distance away from them. They saw that Aaron and the rest of his men seemed to follow a trail farther down the gorge, and kept an eye on the party from afar. Dawn felt uneasy and nervous, though possibly that was a remnant of her last time hereabouts, when she had been surprised by the demons and fought them together with Grinna and Teren.
They kept the party in sight and followed them from afar. The soldiers were talking casually and didn’t seem to proceed very cautiously, apparently very sure of themselves. In consideration of the fact that they had been warned of the danger the demons presented, Dawn couldn’t help but wonder. Were they really such outstanding fighters that they wouldn’t break a sweat if attacked by the spiders?
As she was thinking about that, a slight noise made her prick her ears. Somewhere in front of them, small pebbles and debris were shifting and rolling downhill. Dawn froze, standing motionless together with Ankou, as she saw small grey shapes skittering down the rock face behind the shifting mass of stones. It was a veritable avalanche of them. These were not the huge grown-up spiders she had been fighting before, but the new children of the demon queen. They were bigger now than she had seen them in her dreams, already as large as big dogs. Obviously they were growing fast. And they were on a direct collision course with Aaron’s party.
Dawn stood for a moment dithering, then decided she would take a wait and see approach. If Aaron’s men at arms were able to easily vanquish the small spiders, she would stay out of the fight. It wouldn’t do to battle them and get caught again by Aaron and his men in the end.
But the soldiers were completely surprised by the mass of spiderlings that attacked them from the back. The first men were down and out, as soon as the little demons reached them. Apparently, they already were as venomous as their grown-up brethren. The remaining men turned to battle them and managed to kill a few of their attackers with their swords or with some skills, but soon they too were overrun. Into the confusion, two adult spiders added themselves, coming down from above in front of the soldiers.
One moment everything had been quiet and now a cacophony of screams, chittering and battle noises filled the gorge. The fight was over before Dawn even had a chance to intervene, most soldiers had been bitten by one of the small demons and had lost consciousness. Now that Aaron’s men were out of the fight, she didn’t have any intention of heroically fighting the spiders and spiderlings on her own, already convinced that she couldn’t win a battle against the mass of little demons in addition to the two adults. She helplessly watched as the spiders cocooned their prey and carried the men off farther into the gorge. Very carefully, Dawn shifted her position so she stood with her back to the rock wall, peering around anxiously. Battle noises from behind made her fear the worst. Obviously the soldiers on watch with the horses had also been attacked. Dawn fervently thanked the Trickster for her stealth skill. Without it she would have gotten stuck in one of these cocoons too.