As we made our way through the forest, I could feel Silva’s gaze burning into my neck. The hunting plan had taken into account the abilities of everyone in our group, not as much the actual relationships we had with each other. A small part of me hoped that Silva understood this and didn’t think I was just torturing her through my company.
Ruby was in front of me, currently carried by Mell as she whispered quiet directions into his ear every time they spotted something. Watching them work in near perfect unison was a great distraction from the threatening aura of both Silva and the forest. We were extremely lucky that Sera’s guess about the wolves was correct, as none of us directly felt the forest’s ire after we left the bodies behind. While I didn’t discuss it, it did bring up some thoughts about how the mana worked as a whole. If Elm had been here, I’d probably be discussing it with him and watching him slowly die inside.
I hope he’s ok.
It wasn’t something I could think about now. No, it was more accurate to say that it was something I was avoiding thinking about. Thinking about my mentor’s safety would only make the weight of how fucked we were heavier.
Instead, I simply kept my eyes on Mell’s back as he led us forward past trees and smaller shrubs. The bushes weren’t as common as the trees, but they tended to be extremely thorny and were hard to traverse around. Every time we ran into a large patch, we had to detour for a good bit. However, seeing Ruby consistently whisper in his ear told me that we were on the right track.
As we weaved through more trees, Mell’s movements slowed and he eventually turned back to us, giving me a very giddy thumbs up. As Ruby jumped off of his back, something in the air began to shift. The soft wind of the winter chill had stopped and the air around us had become stagnant. Ruby opened her eyes as a prideful grin came across her face.
“This should cut out most of the noise, but it’s probably best if we stay quiet. There’s three fiavus in the clearing just up ahead. I think they’re grazing. North, what are we thinking?”
“I’ll head up with Silva and give her some cover. After the last fight, I’ve been feeling slightly more confident with my light attunement. You two keep an eye out for anything.” I took a scan of everyone in the circle and saw that Silva’s scowl had only grown thicker. “According to Sera, we can only kill adults, so avoid any of the tiny ones. Got it, Silva?”
She gave me a reluctant nod, and I extended out my hand.
“I’m not carrying you.” She stated flatly.
Right, that.
“I just need your hand. As long as their viewpoint is only in a single direction, I can cover us pretty well.”
She appeared to be dying inside as she slowly grasped onto my palm, then strengthened her grip tightly.
“Alright. Let’s get this done.”
We began to sneak, crouched down low as we made our way in the direction Ruby pointed us towards. After only a moment, we saw the three Fiavus.
They were similar in build to Strigs, but a slight bit smaller and more narrow. They weren’t the same red color, and were instead a mix of brown and yellow with some white fur on their underside. Their horns were forward facing and looked much sharper than any of the strigs I had seen before, and were clearly intended as weapons against predators.
There was one large one and two of them which were noticeably smaller. Just from how they were interacting with each other, it seemed as though this was the mother and these were their children. The largest one also had an engorged stomach, which looked bizarre.
I tightened my grip on Silva’s palm and pointed to her in the direction of the largest Strig. She leaned in close to me and mouthed “Get us closer”.
I focused and extended my hands out forward, feeling the light that was in front of me. With a simple ask, I had it refract away the light from that direction and create a shield of visibility. All that the deer would see was the rest of the forest, not us. It might look weird, but it was better than nothing. As we inched closer to the fiavus eating some of the grass, I saw its ears twitch slightly and its head rise upwards. Both of us stopped in our tracks, barely breathing to hide our presence. Strigs weren’t known for their hearing, but they were known for how fast they could run. If the fiavus was the same or even faster, scaring it meant we were screwed.
After what felt like an eternity standing still, the fiavus went back to eating. We both took a very quiet sigh of relief and got closer until Silva squeezed on my hand to stop me. We shuffled over to hide behind a dense tree and prepare to attack. Silva looked down at her hands, and water began to form beneath them. After a few seconds, I could see the water begin to take a more pointed shape and start to freeze over into a solid object. I’d seen other water mages create ice blades, including that one I killed, but Silva seemed especially efficient at it.
She peeked out from the tree with the ice blade left suspended in midair and began to slow her breath. I could feel each second pass by as she aimed up her shot, until it finally launched. The ice whistled as it flew directly into the underbelly of the fiavus, piercing the lungs and heart of the creature. As soon as the ice blade finished its flight, the creature collapsed onto the ground. The other fiavus quickly ran off into the woods as we got up from our position and made our way over to the deceased creature. A quick glance at Silva showed just how much satisfaction this brought her.
“Still got it…” she silently muttered.
I hadn’t forgiven her yet, and didn’t know if I could forgive her, but seeing her be happy rubbed off.
“Thanks for this. If you protect the body, I’ll grab Mell and we can start carrying this back to…”
My words fell to the wind as I felt a sensation welling up in me. In everything. It was the same sensation I had felt not too long ago.
Primal hate.
It was the sensation that was only felt when you broke a rule in Corith, and I could feel it zeroing in on our location. The trees began to shake and groan as the mana of the forest grew denser or more rage filled.
“Shit!” Silva yelled, turning in circles to check for any point of attack. “What did we do? What rule did we break?”
I reviewed everything that Sera told us in my head, trying to figure out where we went wrong. We hadn’t destroyed any trees, or started any fires, nor had we wasted food. The fiavus we killed was an adult, so it couldn’t have been that we’d killed a child.
The stomach.
“It was pregnant. That’s why its stomach was so big.” My hands were shaking as the sensation of hate closed in faster and faster. My hand stretched outwards and grabbed onto Silva’s, dragging her in the direction of our comrades. We needed to get to Mell and Ruby before the punishment was enacted.
I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, not caring what Silva thought. When I finally got to the two, I could see that both of their faces shared the same horror. The sensation had permeated through them as well, just as it had for what must be the entirety of the forest.
“The fiavus was pregnant. We’ve probably got less than a minute before they start coming after us. Ruby, can you lead us back to the rest of the group?”
Her head bobbed up and down in response as she lifted herself up to her feet. My heart slowed as the ire of the forest grew closer and closer, until it finally stopped. Part of me thought it had dissipated until I took one look at Silva’s face. It had contorted into a look of horror, as if all of the screams of anger had just entered her head at once. The trees stopped shaking, and the forest fell silent. The wind died down as everything came to a halt. Then, all at once, the ire of the forest returned and wrapped around Silva’s body, emanating in pulses like the beating of a heart.
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The location of the sinners had been declared.
The forest once again came alive, and I could hear movement in the distance. Ruby closed her eyes, and I felt the wind change. When she opened them, there was a look of pure horror.
“There’s a lot of them. They’re large, but close to the ground. I think they’re lizards.”
Lizards, but large? I swear I heard something about those in Marlisle, but only briefly. I think they had an E name?
It wasn’t until one of them came bolting towards us from behind a tree that the name came back to my mind.
“Eidgarto.”
***
There were very few stories told about eidgarto, because very few people had encountered them and walked away to tell the tale. They didn’t live on the edge of the forest, but further inside. To encounter one, you’d already have to have broken a rule and survived the first punishment. All that was known is that they were faster than any creature that size should be capable of.
Worst of all, it appeared that every story that I had been told about eidgarto as a child wasn’t an exaggeration, because the one that was making its way towards Silva was moving faster than a strig.
As the eidgarto got closer, its jaws began to open to reveal dozens of sharp teeth ready to rip into flesh. Before it could make contact, another blur entered my sight. Mell had bolted from Ruby’s side and had his foot raised above the creature’s body. With the entire force of his being, he slammed his foot into the middle of the eidgarto before it could even react to his presence. As he came down on its spine, I could hear a sickening crunch. His foot came down with such power that it looked as though he might tear the beast in two. When he raised up his foot, he turned back to Ruby who was already pointing in the direction to head.
Silva was still frozen in place. I grabbed tightly on her hand and pulled.
“We need to go!”
And so, we ran. As I followed behind Ruby and Mell, I could hear the eidgarto coming our way. Their footsteps shook the ground as dozens of them came in our direction. These creatures weren’t normally pack hunters, but they all had the unified mission of killing us.
I knew I needed to do something to either slow them down. Making Silva invisible wouldn’t work. Something in my gut told me that the ire of the forest made it impossible to hide. I turned my hand backwards and focused a blast of light behind me, hoping that blinding them would slow them down. I could hear some of their footsteps stumble or become erratic, but many of them continued at their rapid pace.
Do we keep running or try to hold them off?
We couldn’t run forever, and all we were doing was bobbing and weaving through trees with the vain hope that they wouldn’t catch up before we found a position to fight. As I ran and thought about how screwed we were, I felt Silva’s grip slip out of my hand. She moved over to my right to circle around a nearby tree. Soon after, the horde of eidgarto followed this change in path and shifted to the right.
They only care about Silva.
In that singular moment, she’d given me a clue on how we could survive the punishment. If she was their target, that meant that we could control them. Looking ahead of me, I realized that we had all the abilities we needed to stop the horde.
“Mell! Take Silva and throw her up into a tree with a high branch that can hold her!”
“What?” Silva exclaimed.
“Can do sir!”
Mell slowed down his run slightly to grab onto Silva’s upper arm, almost seeming to drag her forward. Even with the extra weight of Silva he was pulling along, his speed remained unchanged. After searching the treeline for a bit, he found a tree that looked good enough and extended his grip around Silva’s body. Grabbing her below her hips, he steadied himself and launched her upwards. Silva barely managed to grab onto the tree as she reached her apex, and had to reorient herself to sit on the branch.
“What was that for!”
“We don’t have time. Silva, can you freeze water after you’ve spread it out over a large distance?” I had to crane my neck upwards to look up at her while talking. Time was running out before they caught up to us.
“Yes, I can.” She looked slightly irritated that I might have doubted her abilities.
“Good. Get as much water as you can, then use it to cover as many of the eidgarto as possible. It doesn’t need to completely freeze them, only cover them in some of the ice. The three of us will hold them off until then.”
“You can’t seriously think you can fight that many of them. There’s got to be at least twenty of them on our trail!”
Hearing that, I couldn’t help but smile. “We don’t need to. Some of them might attack us, but you proved that they only really care about you. If you don't want to die, start working.”
The lizards weren’t just going to wait, and they finally descended upon us. Over a dozen of them ran directly at the tree Silva was on, clawing at the bark to attempt to climb upwards. Eventually, some of the horde stopped as they noticed our presence and began to attack.
As one of them dove near me, I could finally get a good look at it. It’s verdant green scales were lined with black stripes that went along its body, tracing from its head to its thick tail. The black beady eyes showed no emotion, only pure primal instinct and the desire to tear me apart. Mid-jump, I could see it start to slow down. A strong wind was pushing it away, and allowed for Mell to close in and punch the creature. His fist landed directly next to its left eye, cracking the skull and immediately killing it. While he could actually kill them, I could probably deter them with mana. I saw one of them coming near me and quickly focused as much pure mana from my palms and out towards the eidgarto. I could see something in them shift as they came to face the same level of mana that one would get from standing next to magore, and it clearly made them uncomfortable. It was enough of an opening for a rock, picked up from the ground by Ruby, to be launched directly into them. It didn’t kill them, but the rock burrowed directly into the lizard’s eye. It backed off, moving away from me and seemed to focus more on trying to get at Silva.
“How are we doing?” I yelled upwards, seeing a large orb of water floating above my head.
“Almost there!”
I didn’t know how long we could hold for, as more of them appeared to be switching attention from Silva to us. One minor blessing of the situation was the fact that the eidgarto weren’t pack hunters. Even though they had been summoned as a group, they weren’t coordinated. As one came close to Ruby, Mell had gone in for another punch. As he moved his body forward, one of the eidgarto leaped forward and clamped itself onto his left arm. Although it seemed ready to completely tear through his flesh, it almost looked stuck as it got lifted in the air. Mell took his other hand and placed it around the creature’s head, crushing it inside of his palm before tossing the corpse away. The one that he had gone to attack continued to move closer, and I knew that I was the only one who could take real action.
I dove forward with my hands outstretched. I was channeling as much mana through them as possible, trying to shape it outwards like a blade. Stretching out my consciousness with such a pure force of nature strained my mind. The more I strained, the more I could see the blue light begin to take shape. My hand eventually reached the eidgarto, which had begun to open its maw for me.
With all of my mental strength, I extended the blade out further beyond my hand and watched as its movements began to falter. The open maw fell closed as the wave of mana overwhelmed its systems. My body hit the ground with a thud before quickly scampering back to my feet.
“Ready!” Silva yelled from up above.
“Got it! Everyone, huddle together. Ruby, I need you to shield us from the water!”
She nodded as we all gathered around Mell, and the wind soon shifted to cover us from above. Just as it did, the massive glob of water that had been building from above was finally released. It spread all around us, coating every single eidgarto that was around us. It appeared to shock them, but not stop them in their tracks.
That was until the water began to freeze and solidify, turning into ice. If their eyes could bulge, it certainly would as they struggled to deal with this sudden lack of heat.
Eidgarto were, like any lizard, cold blooded. The forest wasn’t too cold in the winter and rarely snowed, so their bodies weren’t used to ice. The freezing eidgarto looked lethargic as they struggled to make any movement. These horrors of the forest were rendered to easy kills. Some of them even appeared to be slinking away, hoping to find a safe location where they could recuperate from the cold.
“You can come down now. I think the punishment should be over soon once we finish off the rest of them or the forest moves on.”
Silva looked rather doubtful from her spot in the tree. “Are you sure about that?”
“Nope. But I’ve got a good sense of it from what’s happened to us so far.” I said with a wide grin. She motioned to Mell, who caught her when she hopped down from the branch.
“Thank you, North. You two as well.”
She’s thanking me?
“No problem.” I couldn’t name the emotion welling up in my chest, but it certainly wasn’t pride. “Let’s get to work. Who knows, maybe we can eat them?”
Mell raised up his hand, and I noticed it was the same one which had a bite mark on it. “Sir, shouldn’t we go back and grab the fiavus?”
Right, we didn’t want to get a penalty for wasting food. That was a rule that we especially didn’t want to break, as the forest would try to outright starve us to death.
“Sure. After we finish off the rest of them and I heal your arm, we’ll grab it. Everyone else, carry back an eidgarto with you. With how large these things are and the fiavus is, we should be eating good for a while.”
I wiped some of the dirt that caked my body before stretching my limbs. All of the tension, both literal and figurative, had dissipated. All we had to do from this point was clean up our mess and get ourselves back to the rest of the group.
We’d broken not one, but two rules and survived. Although I could feel a layer of confidence building up in my chest, I knew that whatever followed would be far worse.