Sheilah stood up, arrow already nocked, and let fly. The other girls stood up too, but she didn’t spare a glance to them, just drew another arrow from her quiver and let a second shaft loose.
Both arrows stuck true, one sinking deeply in the monster’s throat, the other punching through the open mouth and out the back of the neck. The gnoll staggered and fell with a gurgle, the other took at least four shots to the head from the other girls before crumpling to the forest floor.
Sheilah ducked back down and eyed her friends. “Mind your arrows... unless you like the idea of retrieving them.” she scolded.
They all grimaced. Nobody wanted to get their arrows back once used on a gnoll. Their blood was foul and diseased, besides.
“They’ve gotten ahead of us.” Kellia pointed out to another hill that wedged itself against the high redstone cliffs where campfire smoke could be seen- along with several gnolls.
Sheilah grit her teeth at having not even bothering to check the other hills. She felt like she’d failed as a proper hunter, and mentally kicked herself as a small wave of gnolls giggled their horsey-hyena laughter and ran down that hill towards them.
She stood again, drawing her bow, feeling her heart pound in her chest, feeling as if she was one with the bow, one with the arrow, one with the ground beneath her feet.
There was a sense of impatience as adrenaline surged in her, she let the arrow fly, drawing a second, trying to pick her target as they bobbed and weaved, chuckling.
They wore some sort of hide armor on their bodies with crude symbols painted on their chests, tufted feathers at their shoulders.
They wore armor and carried weapons. They posted lookouts on high ground.
They weren’t just beasts.
Her sisters let fly as she did, their arrows punching through the crude leather.
“With single targets, you can afford the luxury of taking your time and going for the head.” Her father had instructed at some point during one of their rare hunts together. “When there are many targets, go for the body.”
She wasn’t sure how many there were. She’d loosed five arrows and then stepped back, dropping her bow and pulling her great-great-grandfather’s sword.
Her sisters fumbled for knives and hatchets as two of the survivors stumbled towards them, chortling even as black blood bubbled from their muzzles.
Sheilah lunged for the one closest to Fialla, ramming her blade into the beastman’s throat. Black ichor splashed her hands, she savagely yanked her blade free with a ragged twist, and spun as Caidi let out a terrified shriek as the other bore her under with its weight, growling and snapping.
Sheilah leapt atop the thing’s back even as she reversed her grip on the dragonbone blade, savagely stabbing the thing over and over again as her arms were splashed with the black blood of the monster.
Fialla hacked at the thing’s neck with brutal strokes, over and over again.
Suddenly, the thing shuddered and went still, though Sheilah didn’t seem to get the message, she kept plunging her sword into the thing, over and over again.
Sellia and Kellia slammed their bodies against the massive carrion-eater to free their sister Caidi underneath.
“Sheilah!” Fialla screamed. “Help us!”
Sheilah looked up suddenly, blinking as she came back to herself.
She scrambled off the back of the thing and lent her strength to budging the thing that pinned her sister underneath with its own weight.
Caidi was a year younger than the other girls. She was only eleven. She shouldn’t have come on the gnoll hunt. She should have spent her time back at camp honing her skills and planning her next dragonling hunt.
These thoughts raced through Sheilah’s head as they heaved the giant corpse off of Caidi, who gasped and spat and shuddered. Her leather clothing was shredded and she was bloodied.
“Get her out from there.” Sheilah muttered dumbly, dropping her sword and grabbing Caidi.
They hauled the smaller girl away from the gnoll and Caidi cried out as her ankle twisted.
They half-carried, half-dragged the little girl back to the edge of the path that led back to the Dragon Terrace when Sheilah suddenly jerked her head up in realization.
“My knife. My great-grandfather’s knife.”
Fialla patted Sheilah on the shoulder and proffered it to her. “I picked it up for you.”
Sheilah let out a shuddering breath. “Thank you so much, Fialla. I owe you so much; it’s my great-grandfather’s knife, it’s his knife, it’s-” She babbled.
“It’s important.” Fialla finished for her. “Your little sister is important, too. Let’s get her back to camp.”
Sheilah blinked, nodded, and forced her body into action.
When each of them had hunted their own dragon, then they would gain the protection of their totem, but they were too young, Caidi was too young, she had clawed by one of the gnolls, her wounds needed to be washed and treated with herbs. Gnolls carried diseases in their bodies, in their claws, their teeth, their blood.
They washed Caidi in the river and she cried, her body already flush with fever, and then carried her back to camp, Caidi’s body burning hot against Sheilah’s back.
They made it back to camp, and Davian immediately scooped her up and took her inside the tent. Caidi was already delirious with fever, screaming and crying out.
Her mothers told her and her sisters to wait outside, and then ducked inside to help her even as Davian rushed from the tent and moved from tent to tent, calling out names of people she thought she remembered. She was exhausted and drained, her head was stuffed with clouds packed with the numbness of shock.
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People she knew, people she didn’t know, people she’d seen but never met, complete strangers filed into the tent, carrying strange implements, books, spooled parchments. She sat outside the tent, staring off into nothing. She was filled with a strange, panicky lethargy that numbed her even as it caused her heart to pound in her chest.
Over and over and over again, she could hear Caidi’s crying, occasionally rising to a scream. Every time she tried to go in, to see to her little sister, she was gently but firmly pushed back out by her mothers.
Her mothers.
Wasn’t it strange to have two mothers? More, her two mothers were elven. Shouldn’t she be half-elven as well? Why hadn’t she considered the question before? Why was she the only human in her family besides her father?
The amount of foot traffic increased as the sunlight decreased. She saw people from different clans coming and going from their tent. Sabercat. Glass Spider. Thunder Lizard. Even men from the snowy cliffs that claimed the hated Thunderbird. All the Great Totems. The Lesser Totems waited patiently to try to work their own crafts on Caidi. Mountain Cat, the Worg, the Raven, the Horned Snake, the leaping spider.
Her father Davian came out and scooped Sheilah up and carried her to a great bonfire that was being kindled.
“Father, How is Caidi?” Sheilah looked up at him from his embrace. His grip tightened on Sheilah for a brief moment, enough that she could feel the tension in his body, the well of great strength that lay within him.
“She has the blood of the Dragon in her... but not the protection.” He replied. He didn’t look at her when he spoke.
“Will all those people... be able to help?” She asked. He glanced down at her, then.
“We’re hoping. I called in every single favor I had and paid the price.”
She blinked at that. “Paid the price?”
He nodded and lowered himself to sit next to her. “A favor is a debt. A debt, naturally, is something that needs to be repaid.”
She chewed this over in her mind for a bit. “What are they doing to her?”
“Do you know about magic?” He asked instead.
She thought about it very carefully. Her father oftentimes spoke in cryptics and left whoever it was he was speaking to figure out- or not- what it meant.
“I have heard of it, but I don’t know what it is.” She finally decided. He nodded.
“We don’t have need of it. There isn’t a totem out there that allows the use of magic.” he replied, and then sank into silence for a while. She was going to speak up, but decided to hold her tongue.
“Our totems are power and authority. They cannot abide any power that does not come from them. Magic is a power that comes from outside the totems, so they find it offensive and abhorrent.” He looked over at Sheilah and gave her a tired sort of smile. “If we were to use magic, the dragon would punish us for the offense.”
“Punish?” She asked cautiously. He nodded.
“When I was-” he cut himself off. “In the past,” he stressed, changing whatever it was he was going to say, “I was tested for magical aptitude. To see if I could use spells.” He paused, clearly considering what he was going to say. “I nearly drowned in my own blood. A punishment from the Dragon. The Dragon is the Absolute Authority; we bend our necks to nothing and no one. So to use magic is to defy the Dragon.”
She nodded. She was familiar with what he had taught her. All of the people of the dragon were taught that.
She waited for him to continue.
“The Wild Elves, before they became part of the Clans, could use magic. Naturally, our totems don’t allow magic to be used.” He gestured to the people crowding their tent. “But it doesn’t change the fact that they still remember the ways of magic. Caidi... She doesn’t have the protection of the Dragon. So I asked the Wild Elves, those who still remember the ways of healing magic, to try and heal her.”
She bit her lip at that. What price would each of those men and women- those elves- have to pay to try and heal her little sister?
“They’re going to have to pay a price to their totems to try. And I will have to pay a price to them, because I asked them to try.” He paused again. “You understand? It’s all interconnected. We all have a price to pay.”
“What price do I have to pay?” She asked after a bit. “Caidi shouldn’t have gone on the hunt. She’s younger than us.”
He shook his head, dismissing the question. “We underestimated the gnolls. Wearing armor, using weapons, using tactics... we all paid the price for that. But a hundred hunters will go into those lands tomorrow and make sure that the gnolls pay the blood price.”
He eyed her speculatively for a moment. “Lean on me and sleep, if you need to. It’s going to be a very long night.”
She laid her head on his leg and closed her eyes. He stroked her hair a little, but the comfort was too little. To whom should she turn? The Totem? Her ancestors? Her family? No matter which direction she sent her thoughts, she came up at a dead end. Caidi didn’t have the Totem’s protection. Her ancestors, revered as they were, were dead. Her family was already doing everything they could.
She struggled with the contradictory feelings of guilt for bringing Caidi along and the motto of the Redstone, that you lived or died by your own strength.
In the Clans, everyone built up within themselves a certain hardness, a sense of independence and aloofness, because death could come at any time. If one person drank from a river and another, who was dying of dehydration collapsed near the water just out of reach, the natural reaction would be to let the other die.
But it was different for Caidi. Everybody liked Caidi. In a way, they doted on her. It showed in how her father called for everyone to come and help her. No one else would do the same for anyone else.
Sheilah, as her older sister, could have easily told Caidi to stay on the Terrace, or to do chores, or any number of other things. She could have, but she hadn’t.
She didn’t want to sleep, but somehow fell asleep anyway.
In her dreams her great-grandfather Lonato stood with eyes of flame, nails dark as jet, dark as ebony. Beside him was his wife, eyes burning. Behind them was an older man, perhaps her legendary great-great-grandfather Adlan. Rings and rings of people circled her, with eyes of molten gold, and looking over them all was the shadow of the great totem, the Dragon of Dragons.
They all stood somberly, quietly, with an intensity that nailed her heart to the cold ground. Each and every one of the people dressed in embroidered and dyed clothes, in decorated leathers were her ancestors, going back centuries.
She scrambled to her knees and knelt properly, but they stepped past her silently, like wraiths. None of them seemed to see or acknowledge her.
“Is it all right if I come with you?” A young voice, a familiar voice rose behind her.
“Do you want to come with us?” Her great-grandfather asked kindly.
Sheilah whirled around, but her ancestors were only glittering trails of light whirling in the air like sand.
“Don’t go, Caidi!” Sheilah shrieked. “Stay with us!”
The dream wavered and broke up as her heart thundered in her chest, adrenaline icing her veins. She jolted awake; aware that at some point her father had put a bundle of leather under her head and draped his coat over her as she slept.
The bonfire still burned; she couldn’t have been asleep long, right?
She narrowed her eyes; her father carried a bundle in his arms and gently placed it in the heart of the bonfire. Her heart clenched at what she knew lay in that bundle. The flames leapt up as they greedily consumed it.
Davian stepped away from the bonfire and Sheilah’s mouth dropped open in shock as his eyes suddenly turned into molten orbs of boiling flame. He sucked in a huge breath and blew a blast of flame so great that even the bonfire couldn’t compete with it.
Each member of the Clan of the Dragon approached the pyre and added their own flame.
Over and over, they spat the Dragon’s Breath into the pyre, and that’s how Sheilah learned her little sister had died.