Vedek

Frost was strong enough to walk now. They were in the deep stretch of tunnel that led to Sráid. He followed behind Azeroth, who was the leader of their procession. Vedek had the rear with Odile between him and Frost for safety. The tunnel was too tight for them to walk side-by-side, so they kept this formation. Tension was inescapable after what had transpired in these tunnels, but Vedek heard nothing beyond their own footsteps.

“Fine. I’ll be the one to ask.” Azeroth spoke without prompt. “What was that you did back there. What was that power?”

Frost was still shifted, but he opened his mouth and curled his lips. A wolf’s smile. “I channeled the Spirits. Became Anguyakti, the True Wolf.”

“Explain.’ Azeroth bluntly demanded.

Frost wheezed through his pain, but he was eager to fulfill Azeroth’s request. “The Spirits inhabit all natural things of Domhanda. The air and earth; the plants and animals.”

Vedek knew of the Spirits. It wasn’t tribal superstition. Spirits belonged to the First Life of Domhanda, the core of their plane. The fourth school of magic was devoted to channeling them for spells. Wechers like Frost were said to be the only race built by the Spirits.

“Amaroks were made with the spirit of wolves melded with the essence of pine bark and snow. Unlike other Wechers, we Amarok don’t just have one animal spirit within us. We have two. Two wolves.”

“A white wolf and a black wolf.” Vedek said.

Frost stopped entirely. The section of the cave they were in was dark, but Vedek could tell from body language that Frost was confused.

“Where did you hear that?”

“It’s a pretty common story. The white wolf is good, the black bad. You’re supposed to feed the good wolf and starve the bad one.” Vedek explained. It was one of the few Amarok stories that a non-Amarok would know.

“That is not the lesson.” Frost objected. “The wolves have never been colored, or good or evil. Amarok’s don’t dwell on morality and...coloration like that.”

Azeroth scratched the back of his head. “Huh. Then how’s yours go?”

Frost resumed walking and cleared his throat. “Two wolves: A young wolf and an old wolf. The young wolf is fresh, curious, and kind. The old wolf is hardened, cautious, and strong. You don’t deny feeding either. You must feed both. The young wolf is inexperienced and requires the strength of the old wolf. The old wolf is jaded and requires the passion of the young wolf. To deny either attention is to give in to the worst qualities of the other.”

“That is a wildly different message.” Odile said. “It speaks to balance rather than division of good or evil.”

Even in the dark, Vedek could see the glint of Odile’s blue eyes.

Frost groaned. The talking was aggravating his wound, but he seemed compelled to share his culture. “In combat you must be the old wolf, the veteran, but amongst the pack you must be the young wolf, the generous.”

“Don’t know what kids you’ve lived with,” Azeroth muttered. “That doesn’t explain what you did back there.”

“Stories tell of people who are able to make the two wolves one, becoming what’s called an Anguyakti, the True Wolf. For as long as the wolves can be kept together you will have the strengths of both. Strength of a thousand lifetimes combined with the energy of eternal youth. In that moment, the spiritual energy inside you becomes too great for a mortal body to bear, so it becomes manifest outside of you. That is how I summoned the strength to collapse that tunnel. I have only done it twice before in my life: once to free my father from an avalanche, and the second time was in traveling Fae’Riam. I encountered a black shuck and had no choice but to combat it. I wouldn’t have survived had it not been for the True Wolf.”

Vedek’s ears twitched. He heard birdsong far ahead of them. The tunnel became narrower as the dirt mixed with slabs of stone and clay. At one junction, Frost had to be turned sideways to squeeze through the gap. The dark of the tunnel gave way to dull grey light. They had reached the end, exiting on a stone outcropping overlooking a flooded quarry. Vedek felt relieved to feel the wind on his face. It seemed it had rained recently, given how damp the air and ground was. Azeroth pointed out that there were additional crates of silver by the cave’s entrance.

Odile walked to the outcropping’s edge. “There is Sráid.”

Sráid looked how Vedek remembered it. On the horizon were two thick hills. Nestled between them was a stone city and a large fae castle. It was difficult to gauge how long it would take them to travel to the city. Vedek thought they should rest here, given it was turning to night, but he knew Odile would not stop with her home in sight.

His puzzling was given a new complication when Frost collapsed forward. The walk through the cave had exhausted him. Against his own will, he shifted to his normal form. He had been shifted for so long that Vedek forgot how much smaller this version of Frost was.

“That’s not good.” Azeroth grunted. He flipped Frost to his back. The bandages old man Cory had administered had become loose and Frost was bleeding freely.

“We can’t move him like this. He won’t survive the journey.”

Vedek canvassed his surroundings. He needed a quick remedy now. Longstep had taught him much about practical medicine as a ranger might need to heal his companions if they are far from home. Vedek didn’t know much about the plants of this region, but he did know that the Athshin aloe vera was a prized ingredient in medicinal balms. He instructed Odile to find him some. Next he told Azeroth to run to the trees near the quarry and collect branches of varying sizes. For himself, Vedek ventured to the flooded quarry, scooping water with his hat.

When the three reconvened Vedek used the water to quench Frost’s thirst and clean his wound. He squeezed the gel from the aloe leaves onto the area outside of the wound, being sure to not mix it with the blood. Aloe soothed pain, but was also mildly toxic if ingested. After several applications, the swelling around the wound reduced enough that Vedek could redress it. For fresh bandages, Azeroth offered his own shirt.

Vedek pressed his ear to Frost’s chest. “His breathing has eased. We need to move quickly, but we can’t carry him like we did.”

With the aid of the half-orc and the princess, Vedek constructed a travois from the branches Azeroth had collected. It was flimsy but it would hold for the journey if they headed straight for Sráid. At least, Vedek hoped it would.

The quarry and all paths to it were long abandoned and overgrown. The clouds overhead turned dark. Flecks of rain dotted their heads. Vedek pushed the weather from his mind. He was committed to reaching Sráid.

~-~-~

Vedek and Longstep are on their fourth day in the Slevelisk Glade. Longstep believes they crossed into Old Vadalis yesterday. They are trailing a glatisant, a rare beast that a hunter is lucky to see once in his life, let alone fell. This will be Longstep’s second glatisant. He regards his first as the quarry that made him known to the royal family.

They slide down the steep edges of a natural gully. The glatisant is attracted to fresh water springs and the stream that carved this gully is fed by such a spring. As they follow the stream they can hear the beast drinking. It makes a horrible sound as it drinks, like a horde of hounds after a fox. Longstep moves ahead of his student. He opens a jar of a green jelly paste that he dips his arrowhead into, being sure to evenly coat it. He holds out the jar so Vedek can do the same. This poison comes from Athshin. It will not kill the beast, but it will disturb its stomach and make it easier to fell.

The gully widens into a broader crater. At the crater’s center is the spring pond that feeds the stream. The trees here seem to bend, stooping, as if to hide the spring. The roots arc above the soil to form basket-like structures. The sound of the beast is all around them. At first, Vedek can’t see it until Longstep points it out. At the start of their hunt, Vedek caught only glimpses of the beast as it fled them, or heard its thunderous drinking. Seeing it now, hidden in the shade and underbrush, it is truly a fantastical beast. Similar to a leopard, but so much larger and chromatic. Its neck is long enough to drink from the pond’s center. The black belly of the beast quivers as it drinks, making the awful sound for which it is named. Its head sways over the surface of the pond, never keeping it still. With the ferocity it guzzled the water one might think it intends to drink the entire pond.

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Longstep prepped Vedek on their method of attack long before they actually sighted the beast. They are to shoot their toxic arrows into the glatisant’s ample belly. The quaking of the beast drives away other creatures, but it also masks the footsteps of approaching hunters. Longstep traipses up the trunk of one of the bowing trees while Vedek makes himself small to move through the brush.

Vedek moves to a position with a keen sightline. This is not like the sylvan deer before. He will hunt this beast to completion. He does recall Longstep’s lesson about observing before striking. He sees the beast drinking and he sees Longstep on the branches above them. Longstep keeps his eyes on Vedek, who is much closer to the beast. Longstep’s position doesn’t have much concealment. Did he decide to expose himself so that the beast would see him before Vedek? If so then the ranger’s soft heart had proved a weakness. The glatisant has eyes like a tea-stained pearl, and they were looking directly at Longstep.

The forest falls silent. The beast has stopped drinking. Now it growls in a tone nearly imperceptible except to keen-eared Fae. Credit to his expertise, Longstep does not release his arrow under pressure. Understanding that the situation has changed, he starts a quick retreat from the tree. The glatisant’s head fires skyward, splintering the branches in its path.

Longstep leaps off the tree, landing on the side of the pond opposite the beast. The beast scrambles along the basket-like roots of the trees to chase the hunter. At first it seems that Longstep sprinted to the top of the crater to escape, but the moment he touches the edge he drops to his back so that he can slide between the beast’s legs. Once he is past the glatisant, Longstep vaults into the pond, vanishing beneath its glassy surface. Vedek watches all of this in wonder. He has been told of Longstep’s talents, but he has never seen the man move in this way. What impresses Vedek the most was that somehow, in that flurry of motion, Longstep had managed to stab the beast with his toxic arrow.

The glatisant looks over the pond while growling. Somehow the growling is worse than the bellowing. The bellowing was chaos, this is controlled. Longstep is safe so long as he stays submerged. A glatisant only breaks the surface of water to drink. It’s smart enough to not taint its watering hole with the blood of prey. Vedek creeps his way to a better position. They need both arrows in the beast otherwise the dose of toxin will not be enough.

The beast lays low. It is said a glatisant learns as it is hunted. Vedek believes this true as he finds he cannot get an angle on its belly. He can see Longstep beneath the surface of the pond and hopes the old elf’s lungs will hold out.

There is silence once more. Vedek feels a chill up his back. The glatisant has seen him.

The serpentine head bolts forward, clearing the three meter distance to the fae prince. Vedek is too far from the water to hide like Longstep, so he aims for the closest tree. He avoids being caught in the creature’s jaws, but loses his footing on the landing, trapping his leg in the gap between two thick tree roots. The glatisant rushes towards him. Before it can reach him Vedek drops between the roots, fitting just barely in the cage they formed.

The glatisant tears at the roots with its panhandle length claws. What unnerves Vedek most is how the glatisant does not snarl as it attacks like other predators. According to Longstep, glatisants only vocalize as a warning. Save for the shredding of the roots, the beast does not make a sound.

The glatisant's head whips back. Longstep has surfaced from the lake. He climbs onto the back of the distracted beast to attack it with his hunting knife. He would not have taken this risky maneuver if his ward hadn’t been in peril. By contorting its neck, the glatisant seizes Longstep in its maw. The tusked canines puncture harsh enough to spray blood in all directions. Longstep is lashed in several directions, impacting hard against the trees. This is how a glatisant beats hunters to death.

Vedek bursts from the root cage. The glatisant is preoccupied with Longstep and does not notice Vedek sprinting close for a sure shot. He lands the toxic arrow, as well as three more. This draws the beast’s attention. It drops Longstep, limp and beaten, to pursue Vedek.

Vedek leads the beast far from the pond. He has the energy to maintain a running pace, and the conditioning to move through the clusters of trees. The glatisant quests behind him, still pursuing in silence as it winds through the trees, head outstretched and primed to seize Vedek the moment he falters.

Vedek finds a thick pine, one of the trees of the glade that crests higher than all the others. He climbs freehanded with his bow and quiver looped over his shoulders. The tree is old and strong, and Vedek keeps his steps quick and light as he climbs. The glatisant stands on its hind legs, neck stretched to its long limit to nip at Vedek’s heels. Vedek ascends nearly seven meters before he is safely out of the creature’s reach. The glatisant shakes the tree and sways its head to look for a way to get at the young elden.

The beast’s pupils suddenly pulse. It drops to all fours and brings its head low to the ground. Its belly rumbles a horrible, disgusting sound. This isn’t the bellow or the growl from earlier, this is dry heaving. The toxic arrows have driven the beast to vomiting. Vedek draws his bow. When a glatisant is sick like this it is the only time it will keep its head still. All Vedek does is fire a single arrow directly into the skull of the beast to kill it.

Vedek doesn’t have time to revel over his victory. He sprints to the pond. Longstep has propped himself against a tree. Vedek tells him their hunt is ended. Longstep is bleeding from four jagged puncture wounds, but he manages one of his rare smiles.

With the old ranger’s instruction, Vedek tends to his wounds. Vedek is surprised when Longstep tells him to use the same jelly they had poisoned their arrows with to soothe his wounds. He remembers the name of the plant it is made of: Aloe vera. Next, Longstep requests Vedek pull free a vial of red chalky liquid hidden in his belt pouch. It's a potion intended to promote rapid healing. Longstep is impressed the vial didn’t shatter from the thrashing he received.

Vedek finishes the administrations. He looks to Longstep for confirmation that everything will be alright.

“I’ll live.” Longstep says. “Though my left half may never be the same. The potion will slow the bleeding. There’s no rush to get back to the castle. We’ll camp here tonight and begin tracking back tomorrow.”

Vedek makes a fire. They can’t eat the meat from the glatisant because its poisoned from the arrow. Most wildlife was scared from the area by the glatisant, but Vedek does track a pair of rabbits hiding in their den. Vedek next sets a layer of leaves around their campsite to insulate it from the damp ground. Longstep fills his waterskin before setting himself in the position he’ll stay in for the rest of the night.

“What trophy will you take from the beast?” Longstep asks his student.

Vedek stokes the flames before turning his attention to dressing the rabbits. “I’m not certain. I feel the pelt is out of the question given how long it would take to skin.”

“You don’t have to skin the whole beast. The hide on the neck has some amazing properties. It would make a fine belt or sash for a future king.”

Vedek doesn’t say anything to that. He doesn’t like thinking about being the future king. He wants to be Longstep’s student forever. Longstep drinks the water from the spring. His eyes are focused on the darkening sky glimpsed through the branches. Some sort of mood must have come over him, because he began to speak in poetry.

“Two hunters entered the wood. One new and one wise.

The wise hunter did not return and the new hunter was made wise for it.”

It was a morbid verse to speak given the situation. Longstep watches Vedek through half-lidded eyes. Vedek doesn’t look back. He is too unnerved by his teacher’s sudden shift in attitude.

“Apologies. The man who taught me rangercraft wrote that poem. I can’t help but feel it was meant to describe my time with him.”

Vedek keeps silent. He pretends to be absorbed in skinning the rabbits and draining their blood. Minutes pass without another word exchanged. Once the rabbits are prepared, Vedek crafts a spit to cook them on.

“Before you set those, there’s something I want you to do…” Longstep murmurs.

Anxiety spreads across Vedek’s body. What will Longstep ask of him? Could he actually be dying and wished to make a final request? Or will this have to do with Vedek’s studies once they return to the castle?

After a labored breath, Vedek looks to his teacher to confirm that he is ready to hear him. Longstep’s face is covered by the dancing shadows of the fire. In this moment, Vedek would believe his teacher immortal.

“Remove the skulls. It’s time you ate a rabbit’s brain.”

Vedek laughs. He can’t help it. He expected so much worse.

“I’m serious.” Longstep said seriously. “You should eat the rabbit’s brain.”

“That part is always thrown away or used for tanning.” Practical joking was not Longstep’s natural behavior, but this seemed a strange request nonetheless.

“The rabbit’s brain is good for your body and mind. It is a delicacy for the ranger bands of Old Vadalis, which is where we currently are. Consider it the cap to your hunt.”

Vedek is perplexed, but he follows Longstep’s request. The rabbit brains are gray nuggets of flesh. One for himself, and one for Longstep. Vedek holds it between index finger and thumb. Somehow this is the thing that gives him pause, not any of the moments from the fight with the glatisant.

“To wise hunters.” Vedek toasts.

“To new hunters.” Longstep follows.

The pellet of meat goes down easy, tasting better than Vedek would’ve predicted. Once he swallows he looks to Longstep for final confirmation that this wasn’t some roundabout lesson like with the sylvan deer. Longstep smiles back at him.

“Hail to you Vedek Slevelisk. You’re a ranger now.”