Lorelai

Harsh whispers roused Lorelai from her fitful sleep. She didn’t want to admit it, but sleeping outside on the moss with a blanket was not something she cared for. But, as with most things in life, there was a price to be paid.

With bleary eyes, she blinked over at Bjorn and Elowyn who were whispering and gesturing at each other. Their fire had died out, but there was still a wisp of smoke curling away under a calm, morning breeze. The sky was a dark blue, clear of clouds. The sun would probably pop up at any moment. She sighed and tried to rub the sleep from her eyes.

She was about to ask them what they were going on about, but they shushed her. A shuffling sound came from behind her, and she quickly got to her feet to see Hallik with a finger over his lips.

“Something came through our camp last night,” Hallik whispered.

Lorelai pulled her dagger, Dris, out and unsheathed it. She had purposefully avoided telling anybody that the king had been using the weapon to transfer power from the Voyagers over to that ashimal creature in the portal. That didn’t stop anybody from asking about it. They could tell it was different, and she’d worried that Lind would just take it from her. As of yet, nobody seemed to have figured out its origins.

If there was power inside of it, perhaps she could figure out how to use it. Maybe she could even use it on creatures. Perhaps the power she was after was already at her fingertips, but she was still committed to entering Vanalf. Maybe even the magic she might obtain there would help her decode the weapon’s use.

“What was it?” Lorelai asked.

Hallik shrugged and shook his head.

They were all still alive, so whatever it was, it hadn’t intended to hurt them, though she did notice that her bag looked like it had been ruffled through. The contents were dumped at her feet. Weird.

The wisp that had led them here still hovered over the ground at the edge of the clearing, slowly bobbing up and down as if it were sitting upon ocean waves. Its glowing light was dim, and she worried that perhaps they’d broken it by waiting.

“It didn’t hurt us,” Elowyn hissed at Bjorn.

Lorelai’s senses had returned well enough for her to be at sharp attention.

“That doesn’t mean it has peaceful intentions,” Bjorn said. “We should track it down.”

“But it didn’t do anything to us,” Elowyn said. “It could have been a deer or a rabbit. I’m not going to waste our time looking for a deer.”

“It wasn’t either of those,” Bjorn said. “Otherwise, they would have set off one of my traps. All of which are still intact.”

“So it was a spirit?” Lorelai asked. She didn’t know much about monsters or spirits or anything. She’d never had to know much about them.

“Possibly,” Bjorn whispered, “but there are several monsters that like to toy with their prey, but most of them like to steal something of value, then sneak off to lure people to their lairs. It’s a common tactic for those that want to deliver fresh meat to their offspring.”

“Did it steal anything?” Lorelai asked.

Bjorn shook his head. “No.”

“Then let's be on our way,” Hallik said.

“We should try to find it,” Bjorn pressed. “It won’t leave us alone until we do.”

“But you just said it could be a trap,” Lorelai said.

Bjorn’s jaw hardened. “Yes, but do you want to try going to sleep another night out here knowing that something will be sneaking around your camp?”

Hallik had just finished rolling up his blanket. “I say we continue. We’ll get to my father then return to the city. If we’re inside Dalstava, it won’t bother us.”

“That seems rather avoidant,” Lorelai said. Whatever was happening, she could at least see Bjorn’s logic.

“Look, Bjorn has a point,” Hallik said, “but the reality is that it didn’t take anything. It was probably just a deer, and it had managed to dodge Bjorn’s traps. It’s not like his traps are infallible, see.” Hallik finished putting his bag over his shoulder before trying to sneak out of their camp, stepping on at least three of Bjorn’s sound traps in the process.

Elowyn shook her head.

“I’m not as agile as a deer,” Hallik said, “but I’m sure it could be done.”

As Hallik neared the wisp, its light flared back, and it started to bounce away with renewed energy.

Lorelai had to remind herself that these were the same people who’d fought and killed that mist demon yesterday. Granted, Lind had done most of the real damage, and none of them had the use of any magical abilities. Hallik and Elowyn were still so young, but they had been braver than her, though she hadn’t been trained to fight. She could see that it provided them an extra level of confidence that she had yet to acquire, at least when it came to combat. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, if the portals remained broken, there’d be a lot of fighting to come.

“Besides, do you think you can even track what came through?” Hallik asked before triggering yet another of Bjorn’s noise traps.

Bjorn only grunted. He’d been scouting around the whole area ever since Lorelai woke up. He didn’t seem to have any clear direction on where he should be looking. His grunt turned into a growl. “That’s another thing that’s bothering me,” Bjorn said. “The only evidence we have of something being here is that our bags were all rifled through. That leaves me wondering if it was one of you doing it.”

“Well, Elowyn does snore on occasion, but I don’t think we have anybody digging around in their sleep,” Hallik said. “I say we get moving. Who knows how many more days we’ll need to be out here. The sooner we meet my father the better. I’m worried the longer we stay away from Vanalf, the greater the risk that more monsters will come through. I have no desire to fight through an army of trolls without even being a Grimnir yet.”

Lorelai shook her head. She was decided. She tied her blanket onto her bag and followed after Hallik. “Let’s go then. No time to waste.” She didn’t wait for any more discussion. The wisp was increasingly happy as their group resumed the journey. Its colors undulated between orange and yellow, a red spark sometimes shooting out of the top of it.

Bjorn only grumbled a little before following them.

Lorelai kept her dagger out. She hadn’t had the opportunity to use it on anything yet, but she couldn’t deny the sense of comfort she felt in holding a weapon. Yesterday’s events still had her on high alert. After snatching the dagger and running up the stairs, she should have kept fleeing. Instead, she’d crumpled to the floor, breathing rapidly, almost crying. She’d sat there for perhaps a whole hour when she noticed steam issuing from the hidden door.

The ashimal had figured out how to get through the doors. She ran down one floor and hid in a room after getting cornered. The ashimal was hunting for her. Even though it had somehow gotten through the portal, it still wanted the magic contained inside of Dris. She could only imagine what the beast would have done had it gotten possession of the dagger.

What worried her more than the ashimal itself was the very plan. Whose idea was it to start killing all the Voyagers? Did that come from King Knos’s fathers? Perhaps the ashimal had come up with the idea, and it was building up to it for the last hundred years. She didn’t know much about ashimals, but how did the creature use a Voyager’s magic? It had some control of shadow or fog magic or whatever that was. Her fear was that there was something else involved in trying to destroy the portals. Something even more sinister than just the ashimal.

And with the Grimnir Guard apparently destroyed, Avskild was essentially defenseless. The troll invasion would only be the beginning of worse things to come. A tight pain grew in her chest as the thoughts swirled in her brain, and her vision started to fade.

Beside her, a hand gripped her elbow. Elowyn’s green eyes with a firm intensity. “We can do this,” Elowyn whispered. Her grip tightened as though she were helping Lorelai stand. “Say it. We can do this.”

Lorelai swallowed hard and took a sharp, shuddering breath, focusing on Elowyn’s eyes. “W-we can do this.”

Elowyn nodded.

Lorelai hadn’t noticed until now, but she’d been shivering. It wasn’t even that cold. The sun was up now, and the air was warming.

“Say it again,” Elowyn urged, grip loosening just a bit as Lorelai’s steps became more steady.

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“We can do this,” Lorelai said, though all the odds were stacked against them. She didn’t really believe they could do it, at least not likely, but she was at least determined to fool herself long enough to keep fighting. Perhaps that was the best they could do. If somebody like Bjorn who had essentially no hope at all could keep fighting, she could too.

Lorelai patted Elowyn’s hand and nodded. This further affirmed her belief that Elowyn and Hallik were both strong individuals. They probably faced the same thoughts she did. After all, many of their teachers and leaders had fought and died yesterday.

A chittering drew Lorelai’s attention. It reverberated down to them as if from several directions at once.

Bjorn had his sword in one hand, crossbow in the other as if he’d been waiting for this.

“Do you have any animals native to Avskild that make such a sound?” Bjorn asked.

“No,” Elowyn said. “Definitely not.”

The sound triggered again, like a crescendoing piece of metal being bent back and forth. A moment later, a small, furry creature dropped from the trees directly in front of Hallik and right beside the wisp guide. The wisp continued bouncing merrily as if it hadn’t a care in the world.

The creature cocked its head up at Hallik. It was no larger than an average dog, but it resembled a squirrel more than anything else. Aside from the part where it had three tails, each one equipped with a barb. It opened its mouth, and the chittering noise resumed, sounding from everywhere all at once. If the sound was meant to disorient or confuse them, it wasn’t working, but it was terrifying to see the creature’s mouth. Rows of sharp, spine-like teeth completely lined its mouth, resembling the fangs of a snake. The mouth opened significantly wider than it should, and lines of sticky saliva hung and dripped, steaming as though it were some volatile substance. It probably was.

“Chupara!” Elowyn shouted, whipping her dagger out.

So it was another monster that Lorelai had never heard of. Fantastic.

Hallik drew his sword out then gasped. “What in all the depths?” Instead of a sword, he’d pulled out a stick of equal length. His sword was gone, somehow replaced with the stick.

The monster lunged at Hallik. He thrust the stick forward, straight into the giant monster squirrel’s mouth. It gagged before jabbing its tails at Hallik. He scrambled back as Bjorn fired his crossbow. The monster ducked its head, avoiding the bolt, but it struck the top of the monster’s back instead. It released a high-pitched whine and scampered toward Bjorn. He flung one of his knives at it then dove to the side. The beast was agile, however, and pursued after him. He tried getting behind a tree for protection, but the chupara jumped to the tree and rounded it easily, its three tails grasping the trunk for extra support.

Lorelai and Elowyn sprang into action. They both seemed to have the same idea as they swung for the trunk. Lorelai stabbed, holding Dris with an underhand grip. She stabbed the middle tail just as Elowyn slashed at the bottom one. Dris grazed off the bony spine and stuck into the trunk. The injured tails slashed back at them as the chupara fell. Elowyn slipped away unharmed, but Lorelai was slapped bodily by the chupara’s middle tail. Something had caused a sharp pain on the back of her right arm.

She knew exactly what had caused it, triggering the fear that it would be much worse than a simple scratch.

The chupara landed gracefully, but Bjorn hacked across its face with his sword, scoring a gash from its eye to its mouth. It yelped, but despite the distraction, its tails still jabbed at Lorelai again. She stepped back, swinging Dris. They missed each other, but she felt the wind of the chupara’s tail as a barb narrowly passed her arm again.

Hallik roared as he appeared beside Lorelai, snatching one of the tails in his hand. The barb twitched as if trying to reach him. The other two tails sprang to jab at him, but Elowyn and Lorelai grabbed those ones respectively. She started hacking down at it with her dagger, but she wasn’t sure if that was doing much good. What they really needed was for Bjorn to do something up front.

“Bjorn!” Hallik shouted, yanking back on the tail as the chupara tried turning back to face them.

Bjorn was already on it, hacking down at the chupara with careful swings. It was like he was trying to avoid its face for some reason. The chupara kept biting at his sword.

Elowyn pushed forward. The chupara couldn’t reasonably hold her back with only its tail, so she slammed down, her dagger ramming into the side of the monster. She stabbed again, avoiding its hind leg as it tried to swipe at her. Lorelai and Hallik pulled back on the tail to prevent the beast from turning around. Elowyn stabbed a third time as Bjorn managed to slice it across the side of its neck.

The chupara yelped one last time before it collapsed.

They released the tails and stepped back, all of them panting.

“What in Kel’s abyss is a chupara?” Bjorn asked. “Even its saliva is corrosive. I didn’t want it getting on my sword.” He tried wiping the gore off on some nearby mosses.

“Yes, sorry,” Elowyn said. “It’s hard to shout all of its details out to you while it’s trying to kill us. They’re best killed from a distance.”

“Alright, that’s great, but where’s my sword?” Hallik asked, arms up as he looked around. “And why did I have a stick in my belt? How did none of us notice that?”

Lorelai did think that odd. “I think we know what was taken from us last night, then,” she said. “Though I do find it interesting that instead of just taking something, it actually replaced it with a stick. I’m not familiar with anything that would do that.”

Elowyn shook her head and tried to hide a smile behind her hand. “I think I know exactly what would do something like that.”

Hallik was aghast. “And why would that be funny? Please don’t tell me you took it. No.” He held up a hand toward her. “No, that’s not something you would do. So what was it?”

“Well, It probably wasn’t done with malicious intent, in fact—” Elowyn’s voice fell short as they heard something like a crunching pinecone. They all snapped to attention to regard the sound’s location.

Lorelai could have sworn that she saw the hand of a toddler waving at them from behind the trunk of a tree.

“Guilty,” called a small, gruff voice. A little man emerged from the other side of the tree. He wore a pointed, red cap and had a gray beard that went down to his thighs, but he stood no taller than Lorelai’s knees. He had a bag over one shoulder and wore a knit tunic tucked into knit trousers. Most notably, he dragged Hallik’s sword behind him.

“A gnome,” Bjorn said, slowly lowering his sword.

The little gnome pointed at Bjorn sharply. “It’s Nister Gnome to you, slayer,” the gnome squeaked, “but the rest of you can call me Nis for short.”

“But you’re already short,” Hallik said.

Nis tugged his beard before bursting into a laughing fit. The sound was such a high pitched squeak that even Lorelai couldn’t resist laughing as well. The response was so unexpected that it only made it that much more hilarious. Only Bjorn remained unphased, glaring at the little man as though expecting him to attack.

After several moments, Nis wiped tears from his eyes. He pointed at Hallik and said, “I knew you were one of the good ones.”

As if suddenly realizing something, Hallik gasped and said, “You took my sword!”

“Bah,” Nis said, lips curling in disgust. “If you can call this a sword. It’s quite hideous, really. More like a hunk of old metal with a handle.” He flung it to the ground in front of him then shivered away from it.

“Excuse me?” Hallik said. He glanced at the others, but Lorelai still had no idea what was happening. She’d heard of gnomes before but this interaction was… strange.

Nis waved Hallik off. “I was going to try and fix it but decided it wasn’t worth my time. Besides, I knew that stick would do you more good against the chupara anyway.”

Hallik retrieved his sword, inspecting it before putting it back into the loop at his belt. “How did you know we’d be attacked by a chupara?”

“I saw it,” Nis said with a shrug.

“But then when did you take Hallik’s sword?” Lorelai asked.

Nis looked her up and down before responding. “When you were all sleeping, of course. Your traps didn’t look very good either by the way, so I fixed some of them up.”

Bjorn’s scowl somehow deepened.

Lorelai had to ask the question. “So you stole Hallik’s sword while we were sleeping, knowing that we’d face a chupara later that day?”

“Borrowed!” Elowyn said before Nis could answer. “She meant to say ‘borrowed’, not ‘stole.’”

Nis’s expression had darkened as soon as Lorelai had used that word, but he nodded as Elowyn clarified. “Yes,” Nis said. “It noticed you last night, just before it got dark. Couldn’t fix the useless chunk of metal though. Not worth my time. Don’t dead yourselves. Good day.”

Before they could say anything else, the gnome disappeared behind the tree. Lorelai walked over to double check, but it appeared as though Nis had completely vanished. “He’s gone,” she announced to the rest of them.

“Wow,” Elowyn exclaimed, clapping her hands together. She was absolutely beaming.

“I don’t like it,” Bjorn said.

“You’re just saying that because it got through your traps,” Elowyn said.

“By nature’s rays,” Hallik said. “What just happened?”

“Gnomes are good omens,” Elowyn said. “He will likely help us from time to time.”

“I know that much,” Hallik said, “but why in the world would he take my sword if he knew we had a fight coming? And if he wanted to help, why wouldn’t he just tell us about the chupara?”

Elowyn shrugged. “They’re beings, not creatures.”

“Unfortunately,” Bjorn growled and pulled out a parchment and started making notes.

Elowyn rolled her eyes. “What I mean by that is that the gnomes are known as being reclusive. They don’t tend to socialize much, though practically nobody has been privy to their society except for when they interact with humans in exchanges similar to this, but most commonly they help around farms and take care of animals as long as you feed them.”

“So who in the world fed the blighting gnome?” Bjorn asked.

Elowyn frowned at him. “That’s enough, Bjorn. Be nice to our new friend. Now that Nis is somewhat connected with us, if we don’t leave him food, he might take some of your knives and keep them unless you make up properly.”

Lorelai shook her head. “So is there some benefit to having Nis follow us around? We don’t have any livestock.”

Elowyn looked around in thought before shrugging. “I guess I don’t know. Nis does seem a little different though. He said he tried to fix Hallik’s sword. He also said he fixed some of Bjorn’s traps. Maybe it’s just little things like that.”

“Right,” Hallik said, brushing himself off. “Maybe we’ll leave ingredients out for him so he can cook or something. Shall we resume?”

“Yes, please,” Lorelai said, though she was hoping the others would walk ahead of her. There was something she wanted to test. She sidled towards the body of the dead chupara as the rest of them followed after the guide wisp. Dris still glimmered in her hand. She hadn’t sheathed it. If it could contain the magic of Voyagers, could it also capture magic from other Grimnirs? Or, more to her interest, other creatures—especially those of magical origin?

She had no idea if chuparas were considered magical beings, but she made a quick decision and stabbed into its corpse then withdrew the blade quickly, trying not to gag from the feeling of stabbing a fleshy corpse. She watched the blade closely. How would she even know if Dris was storing anything?

Her question was answered immediately. The blue gems had the faintest glow after she withdrew the weapon. It was like a light within the gems winked at her. The handle felt warm to her touch. It worked.

She looked up to see Bjorn staring back at her. His eyes narrowed before he turned away, but in that brief moment, she realized that Bjorn knew exactly what had just happened.