“I guess we’ll have to give up on the cave.” Fialla decided.
“Who says we have to?” Sheilah asked. “They’ll be easy compared to... that... thing.” She pointed out. “A few arrows, burn the tent down, and we’re done.”
Fialla glared at the other girl. “Are you out of your mind? We should just go to the pass!” She argued. “We’ve got more important things to do besides-” She cut off as the golden ring appeared in Sheilah’s eyes.
“They don’t belong in our lands.” Sheilah stated flatly. “Our lands. These lands belong to us. That meadow belongs to us. This canyon is ours. The cave is ours. I will not allow them to think that they belong here.” She finished in a snarl.
Fialla wanted to argue with Sheilah, but couldn’t find the words. Any member of the Clans would feel the same, and they’d do exactly what Sheilah was planning on doing- murder them all.
“We can do it after the trial.” Fialla decided.
“No.” Sheilah decided, nocking her first arrow. “It starts now.”
Fialla watched Sheilah stalk across the meadow, examining her kills, tugging her arrows out of the bodies of the fallen giants, tossing burning logs into the tent until it blazed furiously.
Where had the giants gotten the cloth? Where had they gotten the wood? There were no trees this far north.
One of the giants struggled to rise; apparently Sheilah’s arrow hadn’t been wholly lethal. Sheilah shoved her sword into the giant’s ear, causing it to flop down again limply. She jerked her blade out and wiped it on the back of the giant’s skull.
She herself sat with her grandfather’s spear across her knees, watching Sheilah work. Her friend had been ruthless, firing arrows into the giants with an almost surgical precision. Many of the giants had dropped without even knowing that they’d died.
“Her bow certainly is something.” Fialla muttered, but that wasn’t how she really felt. What she was really in awe of was Sheilah herself.
Fialla- and the other elves and half-elves that lived in the Redstone Valley- always felt a little separate, a little distant from the human occupants of the Redstone. The elves were welcomed as kin wherever they went, but there was always a bit of distance, a brief hesitation from the elves. The humans, they were the true owners of the Redstone. The land was hard and pitiless and yet they thrived here. They had their ways, their language, their customs and culture, and were stubborn in them. They refused to give an inch of this harsh and pitiless land to anyone. If one clan had a rock, and someone from another clan dared sit on it, that was enough to draw an argument. It was baffling- who would fight over something as simple as a rock?- but it was part of their lives.
Fialla envied Sheilah a little. She belonged here in the Redstone. She was a part of the people in a way that the elves couldn’t hope to be, no matter how hard they tried. They had histories here. Stories, legends, heroes, and unbroken lines of ancestry stretching back centuries.
What did the elves have in the face of that? They were refugees. Welcomed and embraced by the Clans, surely, but they had no such histories. Fialla was part of a generation that bridged the gap between the elves and the clansmen that dwelled here, but what then? Would the elves eventually disappear? Would the Elves intermarry into the clans until the elves themselves were nothing more than pointed ears and an inclination to be shorter and slimmer than others?
Would they truly belong, then?
Where did they truly belong?
Her father talked about their lives as slaves, stripped of homelands, histories, identities.
They had nothing until Davian gave them a home that wasn’t theirs, Totems they didn’t understand, and a way of life they didn’t completely understand, all under an ultimatum that every single one of them spoke daily: You live and die with your own strength.
It took a ferocious strength to live in these lands. It seemed like a land that existed to kill them. It hammered the weak until they broke, and then mercilessly ground them under.
Sheilah, at least, belonged here fully. She could recite her family going back generations, could fight and run and hunt and did everything expected of her. The girl, still not even fourteen, strode to where Fialla sat, her quiver filled with bloody arrows and a fire in her eyes that belonged to the Dragon.
Fialla herself felt the call of the Dragon herself; she’d killed her share of dragonlings while chasing after the taller human girl. She’d drank their blood, eaten their hearts, skinned their hides and eaten their flesh the same as Sheilah.
Sheilah was Fialla’s hero, seemingly able to do anything and everything asked of her.
“How about that bath?” Sheilah asked Fialla.
Fialla levered herself up with a spear that was made before her parents had been born. Her family had told her that she was just as welcome to use it as her other family members had. They’d earned the right, and by right of blood, so had she.
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Part of her belonged to the Valley, and she would do her best in her own hunt so that her children and her children’s children might tell stories of her.
“I’m looking forward to it already.” She replied to Sheilah. “Did you lose any arrows?”
The taller girl shook her head. “The only one I lost was to the Blood Tree, and I’m not getting that one back.” She replied with a grimace.
Fialla followed behind Sheilah as they moved towards the caverns that held the underground springs they’d used months before. Sheilah was much like every other human girl in the clans at her age; a little taller than the half-elves, almost a full head taller than the full-blood elves, wiry with muscle, a little gangly about the limbs since she was still growing, and just like the others, covered in scrapes, scars, and bruises.
Like everyone in the Dragon clan, her hair and nails were a glossy black and she was quite a bit stronger than people from other clans. Fialla wondered which Domain governed the strength that embodied the Clan of the Dragon. Was it Supremacy that made the Dragon Clan so physically strong? A physical strength that defied subjugation by anything else? Was it Indomitability that gave them that strength? Was it a manifestation of Calamity that allowed them to use their weapons and tools with such power that they were peerless? Was it Immortality that simply decided that a strong body was necessary to live longer? How did it fit together? Fialla wanted to ask Davian, but she wasn’t sure if she could. The man was inscrutable and wary of questions.
They went into the cave, instantly aware of the sudden drop in temperature and the immediate rise in humidity. There were also giant’s footprints in the wet dirt of the cave floor; Sheilah and Fialla drew their swords at this sight and tried their best to be as quiet as possible as they moved through the irregular and uneven footing of the cave’s mouth.
The last time they were here there was a species of cave moss that gave off a dim light to see by. It looked like it had been scraped off in places, likely by the giants. It made sense that they’d set up a camp near a reliable source of water, but again, where had the giants come from? Where did they get the wood from to build their tents and fuel their fire? There were a lot of unanswered questions.
As they bathed, Fialla asked Sheilah a myriad of questions.
“What do you think it’ll be like?”
Sheilah grimaced. “I’ve asked my father that a lot, over the years. He’s only described it vaguely. ‘It’s a land of smoke and fire and monsters.’ and things like that.” She replied. “He doesn’t like answering questions.”
“Have you asked anyone else besides your father?” Fialla asked.
Sheilah nodded. “I asked my mothers. They had to go to the Burning Lands, the same as us.” She splashed Fialla a bit. “They weren’t very helpful either. ‘A place I’d rather not go of or speak about ever again’.”
Sheilah glanced at Fialla. “What did your parents tell you?”
Fialla ticked off a few things. “Acid storms, ash clouds so thick you can’t breathe, monsters everywhere, no shade or respite or safe place to rest.”
Sheilah’s frown deepened. “More than what my father told me.” She complained. “I wish they’d told us at least what’s edible or at least where drinkable water could be found.”
Fialla nodded. “I think if we pressed them, really asked them over and over, I think they’d’ve given us an answer.”
Sheilah snorted. “I know what answer they’d give me: ‘You live and die by your own strength’.”
Fialla nodded at that.
“Should we stay the night here, or head into the passes?”
“The passes.” Sheilah immediately replied. “We ... shouldn’t have wasted so much time with the blood tree, and again, with the giants.”
“Fine time to argue that, now.” Fialla remarked pointedly.
“I just... couldn’t abide it. The monster was one thing, but the giants? I don’t know what happened. I was just so furious.”
Fialla nodded. “I know what you mean. I felt it too, you know.”
“I didn’t see you killing any giants.”
“I don’t have a bow that can down a giant in one shot.” Fialla replied. “You were very quick.”
“You’ll need to be quick to get a dragon.” Sheilah retorted. “Father said they’re big enough to swallow someone in two bites.”
Fialla nodded. “I have some ideas I want to try.”
“Father said we’re not supposed to help in the hunt... but if you need help escaping, I think that’ll be fine.” Sheilah offered, and Fialla grimaced, but nodded. “Same with you. I’ll help you get away if that bow doesn’t work.”
They ate a little of their rations, filled their waterskins and left the cave and canyon. The Blood Tree corpse was already being ravaged by scavengers. Taking that as a good sign, Sheilah waded in and retrieved her arrow from the body. It was one thing to say that you wouldn’t retrieve something, but was another thing altogether to simply abandon a weapon.
“Looks like people from the Clans have been through here.” Fialla called, pointing at some tracks.
Sheilah eyed them briefly and nodded.
She hefted her bow and headed towards the passes that led out of the Redstone and into the Ashlands.
The passes were a series of narrow notches where only three or so people could walk abreast. There were a few stone blocks scattered here; remnants of a time when Stormheim had attempted to block up the passes to prevent anything from coming through them.
They’d sent an expeditionary force into the Ashlands and immediately retreated, what walked there walked alone, and it did not suffer intruders. Their immediate response to that was to keep whatever lay on the other side of the passes from coming through.
That was a point of contention between Stormheim and the Clans. Part of what made the Clans what they were relied on things coming through the pass. For Fialla, Sheilah, and the other members of the Tyrant Clan, that meant dragonlings and whelplings. For the other Clans, it meant their own Totems.
A dry, searing wind washed through the pass, bringing dust and ash, drying the throat and irritating the eyes of the two girls.