The trek out of the woods was slow going, though despite that, Ayente found herself in awe of the impossible ease with which Archos’s sword severed even the thickest trunk in his path. His muscles barely strained at all as he uprooted stumps that barred the way of his improvised ‘sled’.

All Ayente could do was watch, and as she did this, she tried to imagine the behemoth in a big fight. ‘What does a many like him do to those in his path during a struggle?’ Again and again she pondered the question, and in between her lyrical voice that filled the wood with song, she smiled joyfully, contemplating the deaths of the Cave Children.

The grass bent beneath her feet and released their sweet fragrance, and little by little the canopy of tree branches and leaves overhead seemed to thin as they went farther and farther from the cave. However they’d not gone two hours from the home of their prey when she felt it. Neither she nor Archos broke their stride, she did not even break the rhythm of her song. Her voice carried on until the last word passed her lips and she went quiet.

“We are being followed.” She whispered in Archos’s tongue.

“I know.” He replied with a whisper that wasn’t quite as low as her own.

“Deep ones.” She proposed, her knuckles turned white as her grip on the spear tensed.

“Threat?” He asked cautiously.

Ayente shook her head. “I think no. They hear our fight, they come and see you, and do not know what to do.”

“Sounds like curiosity.” Archos replied with a deep, cautious rumble in his voice.

She looked at him blankly until he explained. “A want to know. You spoke of the deep ones, that they are not aggressive unless threatened is what I understand.”

Ayente’s face did something then that Archos had not seen before since she had fought the Cave Children. She bared her teeth. “Me'lope gyoar'ma lak!” She spat quickly.

He didn’t say anything, she repeated herself slowly. “My people they are not.” She said with a vicious tone. “We trade sometimes and sometimes fight, but they do nothing to help when need comes.”

The rumble was deep in her throat, an almost beastial growl, a hatred that threatened to become a battle cry at the slightest provocation.

“Still, we should speak with them if we can, it may be they have knowing that you do not.” Archos looked down at her reprovingly, only for her to glare ahead of her.

“Who does not help, will hurt.” Ayente said with the voice of a heavy door closing on a subject, not to be reopened easily.

“Fine, we will ignore their eyes for now, We will make camp in the evening, but if they approach, display no hostile act, let me speak with them… wait, do they use your tongue?” Archos asked with a sudden, fresh interest as he crouched, ripped a stump out of the ground, and cast it aside, then took up the improvised rope and resumed pulling.

“No, but I know their words well enough. I can give those words to you.” Ayente said more calmly as she savored the sense of anxiety in the hidden eyes that followed behind herself and the dragon.

“They will not strike unless we hurt a sacred tree, but if we are injured, they will linger like the jackelmen until we are near death, and watch us suffer.” Ayente’s free hand clenched into a fist that turned her knuckles as white as those on the hand that gripped her spear. Her jaw clenched and when he looked at her, catching only the corner of her eye, he could still make out the hard stare of hatred.

“You?” Archos asked quietly, his tail pounded the ground behind him hard just once for emphasis.

Ayente didn’t answer right away, she brushed a tree branch out of the way and clambered swiftly over a dead and fallen tree. Archos reached down, jabbed his talons beneath it, and lifted it up on its end, then shoved it aside with a loud crash.

He felt the tension spike behind them as those following watched the ease with which the fallen debris was cast aside.

“No, the deep people… how I despise to call them that… they are lope’lak. [Not people], they do not help the wounded of our own, even when we trade with them.” Ayente’s voice was scathing and her lean muscles tensed, a low growl of anger formed in her throat. “A companion, come on his first hunt, we traded with the deep ones, then went to that cave, we faced the unikoslof. They were fierce, it was a bitter fight, wounded were scattered about, and he… well he came to close. Foolish and brave at once I think. The male unikoslof, it bit his chest at the shoulder and threw him into a tree. I can still…” Ayente’s words were soft, and her fingers fidgeted on the long shaft of her spear, “I can still hear that crack, and his screams. All I could do was thrust my stupid spear at the beast, we were lucky we failed entirely. We wounded its mate, but did not kill her. Therefore it would not chase us far from her, I suppose to live is enough of a victory, but that was not so for all of us. We dragged him… his name was Neli, away from where he fell.”

She looked over her shoulder into the shadows where their ‘shadows’ watched in silence. “We were watched then, just like now. They did not emerge, they left us trying to care for him while most of us bore wounds. I, by some grace or curse of the gods, did not. So I did my best, but all that meant was that his eyes last beheld my own as his head rested in my lap. They would not even emerge to help bear his body out. It was no easy thing to do. Yet together, those of us who managed to live, took his body back home.”

“I see. Your words begin to make more sense to me now.” Archos scratched under his jaw and pulled the sled of the dead unikoslof over a low rise, “But it grows dark, I can see fine, but you?” He looked down at her and asked.

She shook her head, “Not well, we have some magic that lets us do a little better, but it is vague.”

“Then they will be camping with us unless they choose to withdraw.” Archos replied resignedly. “When we come to a clearing, we will stop. They have not struck at us yet, if we remain peaceful, they likely will too.”

“And without peace?” Ayente asked as she glanced to her left out of the corner of her eye.

“Then we kill them all.” Archos answered indifferently. “I am not what you’d call ‘complicated’ about these things.” He said as he scratched under his jaw thoughtfully.

The fading sun cast an orange glow over the many colored forest, and the white sand colored moss began to glow a faint blow as shadows deepened over them and light began to flee the world.

The sound of chirping insects and the call of birds that did not linger close to the pair or their prize, began to sound, hidden from view.

Archos looked up to the trees, and through the canopy he watched a peculiar thing in the sky. “Ayente, what is that?” Archos asked, pointing overhead.

She followed his eyes through the growing dark, until she found what he was pointing to. A large blue orb that stretched and pulled back and forth from a circle to a long line and back into an orb again.

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Ayente’s face and voice became wistful, wishful, and intense. She brushed her bloodstained hair back with a bloodstained hand. Her jaw briefly tensed the way it had when she spoke of the elves. “That? That is just the gods playing games, the sky sea, we are near the turning of the season now, so it is not surprising it should appear. They made a rope of water, and pull back and forth against one another. Our shamans of old say that when the gods battle in this way, they are fighting over the fate of a soul here. Good gods are strengthened by the submission of the parents to divine will. But evil gods are strengthened by the parents disobedience. Who wins, can bless or curse the offspring.”

“I wonder who will win this time.” She said, without asking, her voice drifting off, “Come… there is a clearing close, we need only turn a little and we will find it. I am tired, and even being you, surely you must be also.”

Archos chose not to pry, but his eyes lingered longer on the bizarre sight. ‘It really is like a moon made of water… being pulled and stretched out from one end to the other, long as a spear, then round as a ball. Strange world. Strange world indeed.’ He thought dismissively, and then grunted with brief effort as he tugged the sled forward again, following Ayente to a small clearing a few minutes off the path they’d ‘improvised’ on the way out.

“You have been here very often.” He said matter of factly as he found the wide area carved open from trees and plants, the ground pressed flat, stones and large logs laid out, it was a well organized camp in his reckoning.

“Yes.” She said succinctly as she glared into the woods, where she still felt the unseen eyes of their observers on them. “We need spots like this.”

“Oh? Why? Are the unikoslof going to attack if you don’t have open ground to protect yourselves?” Archos asked with a sudden interest as he looked out into the deep woods around them.

“No.” Ayente said grimly, just as a long, loud howl pierced the growing darkness. “But those might.”

Archos felt the corners of his mouth relax against his will into a small frown. “Are those… wolves? You have wolves here?”

“What is a wolf? These are the fenrisu. If the unikoslof are cave gods, then the fenrisu are forest gods. They are smarter than the unikoslof, the old ones can grow half as large and the oldest gain the power of speech. Also, they come like tribes. Fighting and hunting together.” Ayente was speaking rapidly as she went about gathering wood from around the clearing and drawing it to the center of the clearing.

As he noticed her furtive work, Archos asked, “Are they prone to attacking humans?”

“If we have no fire, yes. They despise fire, and tend to avoid us, most are not so large as I have said, but they are cunning hunters. Also, you are here, but so is meat. I do not know what will be. But I did not fight the unikoslof, I did not find I would live after all, to then become a meal for a fenrisu pack!” Ayente exclaimed and began to work rapidly to start a fire, throwing wood eagerly into a pile as fast as she could gather it..

“I see.” Archos said as he saw the way she rapidly stacked the wood. ‘Perhaps these ‘fenrisu’ will be a problem, perhaps not. But I’d rather not risk the loss of meat, and these may be a bigger threat than her cave bears.’ He thought practically.

“Here then.” He said, and holding out his palm, he whispered, [Flame] and a tiny ball of fire formed in the air a few inches in front of his scales. He touched it down to the dry wood, and soon the crackling and snapping of burning wood filled the air, and smoke rose into the sky.

“How do they treat the deep ones?” Archos asked as he stared into the twisting, dancing shadows in the darkness, attentive to every sound and crackle not from the rising flames.

“Nobody knows, neither the deep ones nor the fenrisu tell us.” Ayente answered as she sat with her back to the rising flames, looking out into the dark.

“I see.” Archos replied, and went over to the body of the male cave bear and began to strip some of the fur away to get at the meat beneath. “Well we won’t learn anything going hungry, and since you’re much, much to gangly to make much of a snack, this will do.” Archos chuckled mildly, and Ayente huffed and crossed her arms in front of her chest, crossing her legs in front of her.

“A girl likes to be wanted, you know. Though perhaps best not that way, still, did you really have to say ‘gangly’?” The comfort and warmth of the fire seemed to set her at ease, and her tone was clearly joking as she looked away in a huff.

“Yes, yes I did.” Archos said with a firmly exaggerated, jerking nod as he crouched with his back to her, cutting off a long slice of meat and tossing it over to where Ayente sat. It hit the grass, and she quickly snatched it up and jammed it over the end of her spear to hold it over the flames.

“Thank you.” She finally said sincerely as she let the meat begin to cook.

“You share the danger, you share the reward.” Archos remarked as he severed an arm of the bear, and tore into it raw.

The rich and savory fat slid over his tongue and down his throat, he tilted his head back and let it slide down his gullet. “So rich…” he said and licked his chops.

Blood dripped out the sides of his mouth and dripped to the ground, he held the bear’s massive limb like she would a bird’s wing, and watched him eat with gusto.

All at once he was again every inch the monstrous predator, so very different from herself as he tore through fur with a savage ripping sound to devour raw the uncooked flesh of their prize. She held the spear casually close to the flame, holding it up with the butt of it cradled in her legs until the sizzling began.

She glanced up to check the cooking flesh, jostling the necklace he’d given to her, and touched it with a free hand, her fingers tracing over the claws that had torn aside so many of her people over many generations. Finally she spoke, “I wasn’t saying thank you for the meat, but for all else.” She swallowed the growing saliva in her mouth as the scent of cooked flesh began to grow ever stronger.

“I promised I would help your people, so I will. I am still a noble of my country, albeit of minor rank. I am also a warrior, keeping an oath is part of my obligation. Why thank me for that?” Archos asked before he wrapped his tongue over a now very clean bone, taking up the wet juices that still stained it.

“No… foolish dragon, foolish brother, for the else.” Ayente stood slowly, and not without a few aches and grunts as their exertions finally began to take their toll on her in earnest, then jammed her spear hard into the earth, working it in so that it wouldn’t fall over, she approached Archos.

He glanced down at her with a raised scaled brow, her fierce narrow eyes turned sharply up at him, the blue of the sky reflecting the flames in her left pupil, she reached up to touch his arm. He casually snapped the limb bone of the bear between two fingers. It let out a very loud, audible crack.

Ayente was undistracted, and gazed up at the bloody maw, “The ‘else’ is… I know not words. To be ‘is’ to… if you are hungry and have no food, what is food to you?” She stroked the smooth black scales over his body and bit her lips in frustration.

“Valuable.” Archos guessed, and she nodded rapidly.

“Yes, what you need and do not have, I have always thought, always been taught, that I was without that, like having much, but not of it wanted. I wanted valuable to be. I fought to prove valuable. I fought the will of the voice of the gods. Yet always he say I must find my valuable under him. That is why it was so easy to offer myself, as sacrifice to you. True…” Archos put a bloody talon to her lips.

“Worth, is the word we use for this, and it may have many paths.” Archos replied with a low rumble in his throat.

“Yes, and my path, I know now. It will not be the furs of the lecherous voice of the gods. It will not be in some other tribe, dragged off as a stolen mate, nor bartered away for favor by whoever becomes the next chief. None of what has been, will be. Teach me to fight as you of the long history fight! Teach me how to kill so fiercely and so well that Makine shows me his heel and runs in fear from me! Show me, as best this small body can learn, how to do this war you tell of!” Ayente said with sudden ferocity in her voice.

“I will tell you, and all your people. And if your tribe listens to me, many things will change, including their measure of your worth, of that you can be sure.” Archos replied to her with absolute conviction dripping like blood from his maw, with every syllable he spoke.

Ayente shook her head vigorously, “Lak, ya'lopma malno!” [No, teach me alone.] Archos looked at her in askance, his eyes clashing against her icy blue gaze.

She clutched tightly to his arm as if holding onto him for support. “I think they will not listen. Malach poisons minds. I could not see through my coming death, to the truth, but, now knowing I will live? Now it is clear. He will turn them from your knowing.”

“Why would he do this, if it would save his people?” Archos asked, casting a bone fragment aside.

“Because, as it is, he believes I am to die, that would kill the mark against his pride. Yet if I live, he will see a challenge to himself. If only… if only he did not serve as the voice of the gods…” Ayente bit her lip in frustration and tightened her grip Archos without thinking.

“You do not believe that he defines your worth, do you?” Archos asked dubiously of the bloodstained huntress.

Ayente gave a little shake. “No, I know better now. That you would give me your blood to bear in my body shows me what I should have known. I am not a mere… sacrifice, a curse alone, though cursed I am…. But all? I am not ‘all’ cursed, as Malach says.” She touched the bear claw necklace again and clutched it tightly enough in her hands that the tips she held cut into her palms.

“If I were, how could we have survived? Together we fought as one against a monster, and won. I can never bend to Malach again, nor take my mother’s hands being raised to hurt me as she has before. When we go back, he will not touch me. Nobody will lay hand on me, if unikoslof died for the doing… I will not bear it from one of my own kind.” She bared her teeth fiercely, and though she had not grown an inch, she seemed to be much, much taller.

“Are you sure you need my help after all?” The corners of Archos’s maw tilted up, and he put one talon confidently on her shoulder.

She missed the implied humor and answered gravely. “I cannot drag on unikoslof, so yes, but in all else also. I must have what you know, and I must pray to the gods tonight, call for their aid, even demand it if it must be. I will need their blessings in order to succeed, even with your help.” Ayente looked up at him with determination hard as the hardest shield wall, and sharp as the royal blade on Archos’s back.

‘Now, if ever there was a time when she was prepared to believe me, this is it.’ Archos said urgently to himself and then spat the words out as fast as he could in her language. “Lokit am'Malach!” He snapped, [Malach is lying!] Archos took a deep breath, but Ayente did not breath at all, she looked stunned, if anything. Her blue eyes looked at him with innocent trust, but also confusion and disbelief.

When she moved again, it was to run her hands over his grease and blood stained scales, stroking his arm as if she were not sure if he were real or not.

“Malach is not the voice of the gods, I am sure of it, he is lying to you all, and I believe I know how.” When she didn’t respond, but stood only mute as a statue in the capital of his homeland, he spoke in her tongue again, “Oos eyar'sto?” [Will you listen?]

That got through to her, but she could no longer see clearly, “You who saved my life, who gave me life and triumph beyond dreams… you I will listen to. But you must be wrong. If you are right, my whole life… I endured as I did, for nothing?” She whimpered out as her body started to tremble.