While Thar, Yaling, and Lilian were away, D’Argen decided against leaving the camp as the others ate. Instead, he covered his nose and breathed through his mouth to avoid the worst of the stench of cooked meat, and kept his eyes on the forest around them. Everything about it seemed normal. He did not hear any screams or other sounds that did not belong, could not scent anything past the fire and the meat, and could not see anything abnormal. The forest was a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees, a large food chain of animals, and many patches completely sparse of any vegetation at all. Everything seemed normal.
Abbot finished eating first and immediately relit his pipe and took out his sketchpad. He was throwing sneaky glances at the mortals every now and then.
D’Argen stood up and stretched, using the motion to take a peek at Abbot’s sketchbook and confirm that the man was drawing the mortals around the fire.
The stretch also reminded him that he had not rested and probably looked a mess. D’Argen adjusted his black robes so the embroidery on the collar was visible, even though it was black on black, untied and then retied his long dark hair in a high ponytail, and tightened the silver bracers on his forearms. Another stretch and adjustment had the dyed fur of his winter cloak tickling his cheeks and a flash of lighter gray appeared between his legs.
“How do I look?” he asked Abbot once he was done.
Isme looked up and immediately complimented him. Shaffi and Lith followed shortly after and Rimes, who D’Argen had yet to hear speak, nodded along.
Abbot barely glanced up from his sketch as he said, “Good.”
“Thank you,” D’Argen said with a smile at the mortals then turned a glare at Abbot.
It took him a moment but the artist eventually felt the weight of his gaze and looked up at him. D’Argen clenched his jaw, tilted his head, and then raised his eyebrows, hopefully repeating his question without saying it out loud.
“Oh! Oh…” Abbot understood his message quickly enough, and he turned all his focus to D’Argen, even removing the pipe from his lips and putting it aside so the smoke did not obscure his vision. He knew that D’Argen always asked after his appearance, but he usually asked Lilian. With Lilian on a task, Abbot was the next best option. After a slow and critical look over that scanned the man from head to toe multiple times, Abbot motioned with a hand. D’Argen stepped closer and let the other adjust a fold in his robes that allowed the underrobe to move more freely. There. That was the flash of blue that D’Argen wanted visible to others even if he himself could not see it.
“There, all good,” Abbot confirmed quickly and smiled.
D’Argen smiled right back and looked down at himself. He was always more conscious of how he looked around Thar and though he knew the true reason was different, he allowed his companions to think it was due to his vanity.
While D’Argen praised himself, Abbot puffed on the pipe to reignite the tobacco.
“I do not understand why you are so fixated on—”
“Shhuusshh!” D’Argen hissed out in interruption and even threw himself at the other, putting a hand over his mouth to try and stop the rest of the words from coming out. Once he was sure Abbot got the message, he quickly stepped back and said, “Just because we are out in the wild, doesn’t mean we don’t still represent Acela and the Kingdom of Evadia.”
Abbot rolled his eyes so hard they could have fallen out of his head. D’Argen ignored him and instead smiled wide at the mortals. Shaffi was looking at him with narrowed eyes but said nothing and the other three were already turned away, wrapping up the last of their bundles.
“Did you know that Lemisyre wants to change the trend to wide sleeves like how Thar wears them?” D’Argen asked, apropos to nothing. When D’Argen had returned to the castle to change into his new robes, he was unfortunate enough to encounter her in the halls and then spent the next few hours standing around as she outfitted him and talked his ear off about fashion trends.
“It will never catch,” Abbot replied automatically. “They are too impractical.”
“But not for court. And it does look so good on him,” D’Argen whined. He usually only talked to Lilian about these things, but Abbot was a good second as the other man usually responded but dismissed the conversation completely once done. When he had tried talking fashion with Yaling once, she had not stopped laughing for a good month straight every time she saw him fixing something or other on his appearance.
“And that trick Lemysire came up with, to keep them from staining? Now that is magic.”
“Uh huh,” Abbot responded without looking up, obviously already checked out of the conversation.
D’Argen turned to the mortals instead but only Lith was there. She pointed over her shoulder at the forest in a silent answer to his unasked question and D’Argen nodded, realizing where the others had gone off to. Mortal bodies were even needier than the Never Born that consumed food and drink.
“Finish up here. I’ll go find where we can meet with the horses and then get Lilian,” D’Argen ordered, returning some authority to his voice that he had lost during his earlier questions.
Abbot nodded and so did Lith.
D’Argen ran to where the path he had found for the horses would meet their own. After he confirmed that the horses could be led through the forest even if not mounted, he ran to find Lilian. They were bent over a rock and examining the dead grass there as if it held the answers to their fall to the mortal realm.
D’Argen stepped on a dry branch to crack it and announce his presence, then said, “We are heading out,” when Lilian turned to him.
Lilian finished whatever they were doing and followed him back to camp. Everything was packed up so the group set off in the general direction of where they would eventually cross paths with Yaling, Thar, and the horses. They had not found any of the flowers, but Lilian was still working their mahee into a spell over some flowers in their hands.
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The two groups merged and D’Argen took to leading one of the horses at the front, using it as a test to ensure it could climb without damaging its legs further. The horse’s flesh was still cold when D’Argen touched its neck and he frowned.
“Another night, at most,” he informed loudly, reminding the others behind him. The mortals were dressed in warm furs and leathers but even if the terrain were not so bad for the horses, the poor animals would probably suffer some damage. For such a small village, five horses were a boon. Even if they were old.
“We need to go higher up,” Lilian informed, their mahee finally fading with the finished spells. “The flower grows mostly by rocks and in direct sunlight. Further up, where the forest lessens to the air, there must be more of them. It also likes the cold, so there should be plenty of it if we can go at least past the forest.”
“How much longer would that take?” D’Argen asked with a frown. “The cold will make it impossible for the horses to go down soon.” He glanced quickly at Shaffi and her party and the rest of the Never Born quickly got his meaning. “I could just run ahead, grab them, and then—”
“No.”
D’Argen rolled his eyes to keep himself from glaring at Thar. Sometimes, he forgot how overbearing the man could be. D’Argen was ranked higher than him! He was the one in charge! He knew that the best solution would be to send the mortals back. The fact that he wanted them all gone so the rest of them could investigate the screams was only a bonus.
“Higher up means even colder. How sure are you, Lilian?” D’Argen asked.
“Pretty sure,” Lilian answered with a huff. “I took a bulb from earlier to test it and its roots show that the patches should be much bigger, no other—”
A scream tearing through the air interrupted Lilian’s explanation and they all froze on the spot. It sounded much closer than before, though still far away.
D’Argen looked back at the group and locked eyes with Yaling. “How far?”
Yaling shrugged in answer then said, “I need to hear it again when I am–”
Another scream interrupted her and she immediately opened her mahee, the scent of citrus so strong that even the horse beside D’Argen wobbled and shook its head. D’Argen quickly rested a hand on it and waited in silence.
“It echoes,” Yaling finally said. “Not as bad as last night but… at this speed? Two nights, maybe more. Not close to us at all.”
D’Argen frowned. The screams last night had sounded much closer. Instead of making the others think about that, D’Argen turned the topic as he said, “On my run yesterday, I didn’t see the flower, but I did see a squirrel hoarding something purple. I couldn’t tell if it was the flower or not, but if it was, that means there must be more of it. It was this way.”
And without another word, they continued. Along the way, Lilian stopped them all a few times to point out specific herbs and flowers they saw and then explained to Isme how to prepare them for poultices and teas. Lith took notes while Isme got his hands dirty collecting them.
Although D’Argen had said they would avoid the screams, the incline became much steeper and they were ascending further and further into the crown of the mountain. The forest started growing in patches, some so thick that the horses only slowed them further while the sparse ones were filled with rocks and cliffs that would be hard even for the mortals to traverse.
D’Argen continued to lead them through the forest and slowed his pace even more for the mare walking beside him.
They found the burrow where the squirrel had stashed its hoard, some of it consisting of the purple flowers which they stole. Lilian used a simpler spell this time and confirmed their earlier suspicion by simply saying, “Higher.”
They continued ahead and another scream pierced the air.
“Still far away,” Yaling said to calm them.
“Do you recognize the scream?” Abbot asked quietly right beside her.
D’Argen turned to see the response.
Yaling shook her head and said, “No animal that I can think of.”
The sky got darker, the temperature dropped even more, and the air became heavy with winter fog. D’Argen left the mare with Shaffi so he could find a place to camp for the night. The clearing was not too far off but it took too long for the rest of their party to make it there. As soon as the fire was built up, the mortals huddled around it with red noses and cheeks. They were huddled so close to the fire that D’Argen kept an eye out for stray embers, but the shivering that sounded like it could break bones was what had him make a firm decision for them all.
“We turn back in the morning.”
Shaffi looked ready to argue but the other three nodded through their shivers. She bit her lip and finally voiced her affirmation.
“There is no need for all of us to go down,” Yaling said. “D’Argen, would you be able to run down with them and the horses and then catch up with us?”
D’Argen had rarely run with animals before but he jumped to answer a quick “yes” before Thar could voice his opinion. It would be slow, take him at least a day or two, but it would be much faster than all of them going down and much safer for the mortals.
With that thought in mind, D’Argen settled in to sleep while Abbot prepared dinner for the rest of them. Since he had not slept the previous night, D’Argen wanted to rest properly and fill up his mahee before running the mortals and their horses.
Unfortunately, none of them got any sleep that night as the screaming returned, more frequent and echoed by others. The screams were too close for Yaling to use the same spell, putting them all in danger if there were in fact demons around them waiting to strike, so none of them got any sleep. They were all tense and ready to jump.
D’Argen could have sworn he felt the creeping eyes of demons staring at them from the shadows. Abbot used his mahee all night to make the light of the fire brighter, reaching into the further shadows around their camp and trying to calm them. It helped. But not by much. Not with the fog getting so thick that they looked completely isolated in the clouds.
Fortunately, D’Argen was able to use the screams and their echo to fill up his depleted mahee and then search into himself. He was never good at meditation, always wanting to go on instead of staying still, but he has done it before. This time, he had both a reason to keep from running off and a reason to focus.
His mahee churned inside him like the raging waves of an ocean storm. It wanted to escape and cover the world, settle at his feet and make him both fly and sink. D’Argen forced it to calm a little and spent the rest of the night holding a dried leaf and running his mahee over its dead veins and crumbled flesh. Sometimes, running with a mortal felt much like holding a dry leaf in his fist and trying not to let it crumble. The reminder during the night would make his runs easier the following day.
The screams stopped just before the sun rose and the fog lifted, so D’Argen took their mortal companions with their horses and left the camp before the others had even started packing it. Isme had two packs filled with herbs and Lith had multiple recipes in her little book. It should be enough to make Shabir back at the village happy, though D’Argen doubted many things could get the old woman to smile much.
Wrapping his mahee around four mortals and five horses was a slow and painful process. It was more subjects than he was used to and there was no mahee to respond and connect with. He had to squeeze his fist slowly around the dried leaf and make sure nothing crumbled. In the end, it was much easier to just wrap his mahee around the horses and saddle them all and then climb atop the last horse himself.
The way down was much faster than up. Even the oldest mare under D’Argen felt happy to be running so fast through the forest, avoiding the trees and jumping in a way that she probably had not in years, if ever in her simple farm life.
It still took two nights alone in the dark with only D’Argen watching over them. before they reached the foothills. The mortals could not do with another night of no sleep and though D’Argen felt the fatigue itching his eyes, he was able to stay up and protect them.
On the third night, with the mortals safely out of the thickest forest and close to the road leading back home, D’Argen decided against finally resting. Instead, he let his mahee envelop him in the scent of the ocean and sped back up the mountain toward the others. This speed was much more agreeable with him and he knew that barely any time at all passed when he returned to where he had last seen his companions.