…..:::::|. Clouds Forest .|:::::…..

Between sobs of her incantation, Siin approached the girl and plunged his favoured weapon—his ceremonial dagger from a homeland he never knew, a people he never lived with, and a power he'd never known—into the gut of a crying little girl. He stared at the wound; all to similar to the hole his own life left in his gut. Siin and the girl both fell to their knees as she died on his blade. He wanted to look away as her middle burned like a lit parchment, but as the forces left her eyes a little girl's quiet light shown through and he was glad he had not cowered. He strained back welling tears so he could look upon her as a pure, living, child.

He stared even as she was ash to him now...in the palm of his hand.

Kodlaa broke into the circle tossing two daggers into their sheaths looking very worn.

“It just fell dead Percival, The gale I chased. I daggered it and it fell dead.” She was unsure if it was her skill or happenstance that had conquered the beast.

“There are still more.” He whispered.

She looked about for the girl and only saw Siin kneeling with ashes drifting from knife and palm. “Were these things in her mind?”

“She and they made something of a hive-mind of enthrallment. The gales were to guard the vessel until it reached its destination. We were in her way. Conveniently. So they acted on this plot Lukke speaks of.”

“The one to get rid of the Agency.” She confirmed now seeing the reality of what they all meant.

“Did you retrieve the scroll case?” One of the fox-women hurried to say as she, herself, stumbled into the scene huffing.

“I saw no case.” Veygornne reported. As he approached the kneeling man, he saw bits of the girls dark skin laid about the ground. There were glowing runes upon them.

“What's this look like, Kith-Cante? No, what is this?” Veygornne’s query beckoned the eyes of his Exemplariat and the scout, both.

“A message in cipher. She was indeed a vessel.”

“This girl was carrying something the Scerci wanted.”

“And something we wanted.” The scout cut grey-amber eyes to the misty woods.

“Where's Halycind? Has anyone seen her?” Kodlaa dragged as she breathed deep to recover from fatigue.

“She's in the mists. So is Lukke.” Another of the foxen reported as she limped onto the cluster.

Kodlaa felt a malaise befall the hurting group. “Nono, we can't just leave her out there.”

“There's no sun and the fog's way too much to go back into--” Lucian stumbled in, holding a broken arm at the shoulder.

“No, she will not be lost to me this way! Not in felled clouds!”

“Kodlaa there are more out there! A Ghostgale is out there!” Veygornne warned.

“Our kin is out there! An Agency Prospect. Does that mean nothing to you?!”

“It means everything to me bu--”

“There is literally nothing you can say to sway me. I am wolvkin. I will find her.” She stormed off into the woods.

“I've been that girl, I know how she feels.” Siin just sat there. “What if you had buried your blade in me?” His words were a whisper but Percival still hurt for the young man's memory.

“Siin...come back. Collect.”

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“She didn't want to do this. She had planned no ambush.”

“aBn. Come back.”

Siin looked up. Percival watched his ward's will collect itself back into his own eyes. Siin looked at him in this moment, blinking away confusions. Then realized their number was incomplete. “Where’s Haly?” He looked up to Percival.

“Siin, she’s—”

“Halycind can't die on me.” He stood to bolt into the woods and grabbed one of the dedin scouts arms as he left.

Percival and Veygornne nodded to one another and Veygornne turned his ring to a rune that suddenly burst a bright stream of light to the sky. “We will need to keep moving. Havvenchael has to be nearer now.”

Lucian donned his mask and shifted his shape into that of a hawk to aid in their search.

...

She ran from the great white thing, even as she saw the beam of light strike the misty forest, but the creature was very fast and very heavy. Her breaths were not quick enough and her feet were not swift enough to flee this giant white monster barreling down her back. Halycind wanted to cower and climb a tree and blink from this existence but she could do none of those things...she wanted to live.

“Stop running, pup!” The thing cried into her flesh.

She faltered at every call of its voice, as it was like the crash of boulders into her soft gentle mind. She took glaces to its whereabouts as she fled, her mind racing with tactics to rid herself of its chase. The sheer whiteness of its hide was bright to look at and she was terrified to see it at every glance. Its fangs, its fur, its scales, its claws...its size. She kept repeating steeling words in mantra to her feet to keep them running.

Two bounding leaps and the thing was upon her, nipping and clawing at the meat of her shoulder. It took her sleeve just as she managed to roll into a thicket of mist and leaves.

She checked all of herself, all of her torn leathers and caught sight of the gifted rose, crushed and broken and she wanted to cry.

“Bring your meat back here!”

She huffed silently, begging her racing heart to keep quiet. She needed to think, to reason. It had to have some sort of weakness.

Before she could gather all her breath a raging maw roared open from above her and chomped down on a branch just as she removed herself in dirt-clawing scrambles to rocks she spotted on her right.

Horror seized her.

Flat raw fear, like whatever she may have sent through the hearts of the prey in her hunts, made her stare upward at the misty canopy in the grim knowledge...

This thing was going to kill her.

Halycind thought of all her trials as a young hunter...tried to drum up all the old teachings of the older Weroances and Weroanquas...tried to calm her panic with schoolings. Her memory failed her and her panic grew. She needed to—

It grabbed her by the back and flung her body to the trunk of another tree. Halycind turned a fury-brewing scowl as she reset her shoulder from its sudden dislocation. And rocked a now angry head to the mists swirling from her flying motion.

“I want your meat tender when I rend it from bone!”

She adjusted her grip on her sword. “We'll see who eats who.” What her memory had served up, were the Cashtiel feasts of Meatsback and the grand fair of tending to the first roasts of the season. When that thought of long unsated hunger entered her mind, nothing but a stalking crouch entered her body.

She purposefully threw a rock to one of the larger stones along the slight slope and it huffed to run in her actual direction.

“Feigning position does nothing little animal.” It balked as it ran her down. She dodged the running thing and grabbed a hand full of its fur about its throat to catch it for a ride. By some instinct she bit a mouthful of it and ripped as much as she could before the thing bucked her off of its side. She glared hot amber eyes at it, as she slowly rolled the large matted chunk of flesh between her teeth and tossed it, wet with saliva and blood, from her angry lips.

“Your meat’s too foul for consumption.” Halycind taunted an old axiom of her people toward her enemy.

It bellowed a crazed roar, the force of it rushing over her badly torn gear. She stood against it. Tried to study its rage.

She, then, ran to take its flank but its speed, which it seemed to bare from its rage, made the thing too close now to get a slashing cut so she baited it to another running chase.

It would have no more of the chase and galloped to her side to ram her broadsided. With one flip of its tusked and horned head, Halycind lost her feet and flew high over brush and hill directly on to a stone boulder. Her body rolled and fell to an awkward lay. Everything in her will made her draw her body inward to hold the pain. Something in her side pinched her horribly and her breaths were forced to be shortened. She still drew steel to ready herself for another attack.

Which came swiftly as the thing bore into a charging gore to sweep her up from the ground again.

Her head struck sharply the corner of a rock as she landed hard. And in her splintering thoughts she knew this was her end.