They split around the trees to corner the rabbit. Rosalea became conscious of another smell. Something strong, and realized there were humans in the trees with them. As she came around a tree, she saw them, though they did not see her at first. They were on the track of game also, armed to kill. But it was neither rabbit nor at Rosalea that they took up their bows and aimed.
“FEN!” Rosalea screamed, lunging forward, toward the men. She could not see Fen, but she knew, knew even as the arrows were released, who they were destined for.
She was aware of her feet digging deep into the earth, the way her body surged with power of adrenaline, the way brush snagged and whipped past her face. She was also aware of the arrows going much faster than she herself could ever manage. She was desperately trying to drop her shape so she could access her other magics, but she was not moving at all compared to the way the arrows sang through the trees. “FEN! Get away! Fen!” Rosalea was conscious of screaming.
There was a cry, it was sharp, it reverberated through Rosalea’s skull right before there was a bright flash of light.
Something fell. Maybe it was her. There was the sound of dirt and rocks and sliding. There was the smell of blood. Darkness. Rosalea floundered, fighting against the darkness, refusing to let it claim her. She came to her feet, she could see nothing, staggering forward. There was an awful, blood curdling scream, and she could not place it. Her throat hurt – the voice must be her own.
She staggered forward, slowly her vision cleared, and she saw men on a rise in the earth above her, staring, dumbfounded. Then, she was conscious of it, the awful emptiness slicing through every part of her brain. Another awful step forward, hands waving in her vision, hands with blood on them. Hands, and not wolf’s paws. And she could see, in the hollow of the earth, the still form of the wolf in it.
“I’ll kill you!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you over and over and it will not be enough!” she turned with ferocity toward men, who had already begun running. Another step forward, and she lost her balance, coming to her knees. She was off balance, everything was wrong. She crawled forward, to where the earth dipped down and the brown form of a wolf lay.
It is a nightmare. Fen is not dead. This is a bad dream; in a moment, I will wake up. In a moment, I will be so glad that this is not real.
She reached the body, nudging it. Her hand was shaking, and the body moved lifelessly back and forth, totally lax. She wanted to scream, but somehow she didn’t. She crept further forward, hand sliding along the soft fur, to where blood, still warm, had soaked it, touching the arrow. The blood felt wet and hot and slick. The fur felt matted with it. The arrow was coated in the cold wetness and it squelched when she touched it. The smell was harsh, full of copper, and it clung to her hands, boiling on them and feeling icy cold all at once.
She made a helpless sound, drawing the body to her; it slid limp and lifeless over the ground and into her lap. She wrapped her arms about it, closing her eyes as if she could block the sight of the situation from herself, but hearing the awful sound of the arrow shifting in the wound, she knew, no matter how nightmarish this was, it was real.
Fen’s face was ugly in death, the lips drawn back in a snarl, the eyes wide and staring forward, as if she had faced death with rage. Rosalea carefully smoothed the lips down, aligning the black whiskers, smoothing lax muscles.
She buried her face deep into the ruff fur, and tried not to smell the blood that was getting all over both of them; she strained to hear breath or heartbeat, but the body was empty. It felt too heavy with the life that was no longer in it.
Rosalea screamed, and then screamed again. She screamed until lack of oxygen made her eyes prick with fire, and then screamed once more. Her throat was ragged, and still, it was not enough. Not enough to counterbalance this pain. She began to plead. “Fen,” she whispered in a ragged and broken voice, “Fen, do not leave me. You were the only one I thought would never leave me… Fen. Please. Please. I cannot do this without you! Fen!”
Silence except for the wind going through the trees. It pulled off leaves the colors of fire that rained down around her, dotting the blood-reddened snow. After a while, the body grew cold and stiffer, and her body ached from the position she was in, and all her emotions seemed to drain out of her for a moment. If this was a dream, then she should have woken up. If this was not a dream… she could not think about that.
She slowly laid Fen out, and looked at her softly. She looked nothing like she had when she was alive, save in the colors of her fur. The world was darker now. The magic was gone out of it with Fen. Nothing looked the same. Rosalea shivered, and did not know what to do.
The darkness increased. Rosalea realized that the sun was going down. Soon, it would be nightfall. She was cold, and the blood was drying black all over her clothes and face and arms. She stroked Fen’s now very cold body and slowly reached over, pulling the arrow out with an awful squelch and set it beside her. How did this happen? What do I do now?
There was only darkness and silence around her. No answers came.
The moon came up as it always did, cutting through the darkness with its pale blue light, and it seemed incongruous to Rosalea that it should rise. Her world had stopped when Fen had died hours ago. She moved a few steps up the side of the gulch and sat down, unable to walk away from her fallen liana even though no matter how she mentally called for Fen, there was nothing. She was alone. Her familiar was gone.
She saw the silhouette of a very large animal moving through the trees, coming toward her. She froze, her mouth going dry, as she realized she had no magic to defend herself with. Then, just for a second, she wondered if she even wanted to defend herself. She sat still, watching it approach. Its cream-colored antlers glinted against the moonlight and stood out against the dark branches with their snow covered tops, and she realized it was some sort of stag. There was some sort of long whisker like ribbons coming from the side of its face that waved through the environment, and it had a long curling tail that looked completely out of place on a stag. A mystic, she realized.
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The second thing she became keenly aware of was the creature’s immense size. He was not just a large animal, he was more than twice the size of the biggest horses she had ever seen up to his shoulders. She had always felt Fen to be very large for a wolf, standing taller at her shoulder than Rosalea’s hip, but Fen looked normal beside this creature. She started to comprehend the moniker of demon, just a little.
She tensed as he walked to Fen, the large feet crunching on the snow, with tufts of what looked like feathers or really long fur at its joints. It was like a stag, but it was definitely not one. He lowered his head, speaking just one word, but somehow Rosalea understood it to be “return home.” Fen vanished with a glitter that even Rosalea’s magic-blind eyes perceived. Despite herself, she cried out, “FEN!”
If he had been a regular deer, she would have expected him to startle, but he merely looked at her, and it was clear to her that he was judging her. Without warning, he charged her.
Despite her earlier internal question of whether she wanted to defend herself, her reaction was all instincts. She leapt out of the way as he tried to sweep her up in his antlers and gore her. She heard the clack of them slamming into a tree near where she was sitting. Rosalea ran.
The mystic did not chase her, but Rosalea did not stop running. Her side hurt, but she did not stop running for that either. She ran as if she could escape the smell of Fen’s blood on her. What was even the point of any of this? If a Uryan was meant to fulfill the prophecy, am I a failure then? If I was just going to lose my Fen and fail; then why did Ulric have to die?
The weight of it was suffocating. I have ended up harming everyone I was near. I abandoned Lio; I left Nerric to his fate with the Ieshans. I hurt Genya. I made Rhainnon into something not human. I attacked Kaylar. I caused Annie to die. Ulric died protecting me, and now Fen is dead.
The branch of a tree grabbed her clothes, forcing her to halt. She stood there shivering, not even bothering to unhook herself. Why was I ever born? She thought of the fire, of Lindir defying Ulric with her last breath. What is the point of any of this? Tears ran from the corner of her eyes; they felt hot on her face. She could not get full breaths; her chest was too tight. Everything smelled like copper and tasted like it; her throat was raw from screaming and running in the cold. She closed her eyes; she wanted to disappear.
The broken image of Fen mingled with one of Ulric, and suddenly Rosalea was moving again; running as if she could outrun the images of death in her brain. Her running was more reckless now; she crashed through trees and underbrush instead of trying to go around them. Then, as she burst through some bushes, dumping all the snow from them, there simply wasn’t any ground on the other side. She went tumbling down the creek bank and splashed hard into the water. It was moving too fast to freeze, but that did not make it any less cold.
Rosalea got out of the painfully cold water instantly, slogging through the water back onto the muddy bank, soaked through. She was in shock. Normally, this would have been no real problem. She could have dried herself with magic. But her world was dim. She could not feel her magic. I cannot feel Fen. Uryans were strong because they gained a liana’s life force and magic with their own, but it meant they were incomplete without their familiar. She felt as if she was worse than blocked by Kaylar; there was just nothing inside.
Rosalea coughed and began to walk. It was dark; the moon couldn’t filter through these even more dense trees that well. The cold was painful. She welcomed it. The physicality of it felt easier to bare than what she felt when she closed her eyes and felt the absence of Fen. She kept walking. Darkness settled deep over everything as the moon went down. Rosalea kept walking. It didn’t matter where.
The gray light of dawn that filtered through the trees also seemed incongruous to her. Then again, of course, the world was moving on without her.
***
Beryn sat up from her bed and groaned. The damn thing was full of lumps, stuffed with an assortment of straw and down that made it into its own unique brand of horrible. She tipped her head back and forth until her shoulders popped. I feel stiff from yesterday, she huffed. She added the notion of a bathhouse to the ever-growing list of things this place needed.
She picked up her slate from yesterday and re-evaluated the situation. Still nothing clean to drink, not a lot that was safe to eat… how had the hunters done? Food and water, then shelter and beds, she sighed. She stood up, stretching and popping more joints. She used some of the water from her canteen to water the plant that grew from her shoulder, a small tendril of vine that she could feed on magic to help with displays like the one from a couple of days ago. At least this is clean for however long we have it.
She dressed, not dawning quite as much of her armor, and then she headed out to get reports from the hunters. It surprised her to find things almost silent, and she could see her men lining the walls on the south side of the town. When she walked over there, a man was getting a very serious set of injuries tended to by one of her men, but he did not look like he was going to make it. He looked very mauled. One of her younger soldiers, with wide eyes, pointed soundlessly outside the walls.
The landscape curved upwards around Miron, which was in a bit of a valley, and she saw along one ridge a shadow lumbering back and forth, out of arrow range, but still visible because of his size and the green aura around him. “A bear?” she asked.
One of her men shook his head, “A badger.”
She frowned at him. “You cannot be serious.” She squinted, but soon enough she began to pick out the markings. He was not quite like a normal badger, he had a shaggy throat a bit like a dog and there were tall spiky looking things along his back. Still, he was a badger as big as a bear.
I do not want to know how enormous bears would be then, she realized the townspeople had not been exaggerating at all about the demons being huge. The badger paced a few more times before disappearing from sight.
Beryn breathed out. “Plan is still the same as yesterday. Green house up, work on the walls. Did we successfully manage to hunt anything?”
The answer was yes, the men had shot down some wild fowl. They had also apparently killed a wolf, but a forest god turned into a human with silver hair and cursed them and the town. The spy, she realized. She thought about instantly dispatching men to go look for the woman. The badger is out there… She breathed out. I will report to Carnelian where it was. That is the best we can do right now, unless she can bring us something helpful to protect or feed ourselves.
Meanwhile, she was aware of the ferocity that a badger could have, but if it continued to linger, it would need to be the first forest god she killed. She began to mull over a plan.