It was about mid-afternoon, and Nauru was being a little petulant. Whining, but each time she tried to get him to curl up and nap on her bed, he would stubbornly get up, follow her around, get all sleepy and droopy somewhere underfoot, and then complain she was not holding him. I cannot be still to cuddle right now, she thought apologetically as she scooped him up and placed him on the bed once more.
It had gotten to her a little bit, the idea that there might be an antidote to the poison that was corrupting mystics. It had bothered her that the bird had said something off-handed about dark magic. What did that mean?
And so she was feeling a need to make herself busy since yesterday. She had rearranged her little home, made Nauru a bed for himself, sewn a patch into her pants, and now she was making two kinds of bread. I want to talk them into letting me go and at least try to find the herbs that are being used for the poison. I am a human; I have a reasonable chance of finding something out.
She set Nauru down on her bed, and she would rub over his back gently, but the minute she stopped, he put back his head and howled his protest at her leaving him. Rosalea sighed, “All right, grouch, you win, but you will feel a lot better if you just nap without me fidgeting next to you.”
“What?” Amalia said, pushing her head into the shelter, “The baby sings like a wolf now? What have I been missing while I was getting shot at?”
Nauru immediately skulked away, his back arched with his tail between his legs behind the flour barrel. He did his best, low, menacing growl. It was so cute and high pitched that both Rosalea and Amalia grinned.
“I like the smell of the bread you make,” the wolf said conversationally as she entered the rest of the way.
“You can have some as soon as it is finished.
Amalia looked around, “You have changed a lot of things,” she observed.
“Yes, well, I do not have much to do,” Rosalea said.
“The puppy not keeping you busy?” the white wolf asked, sniffing around. She soon found the flour barrel, and the puppy growled at her from behind it again. The wolf seemed deeply amused.
“It is all right, Nauru,” Rosalea said, moving between Amalia and the barrel and holding her arms out to him.
He grumbled, but he let her pull him out, though he tried very hard to bury himself in Rosalea’s body somehow, wedging his face into her armpit.
“I am glad he is so attached to you. The bites seem like they are doing all right also.” Rosalea nodded, they were healing without trouble. Amalia stretched and yawned. “I should visit enough that little Nauru doesn’t think it is so needful to hide and growl at me,” she said with a smirk.
“She did save you after all,” Rosalea said softly to her raggedy puppy. “I do not think you have to be afraid of her.”
The puppy stayed with his face buried in her arm as if not looking at Amalia would make her not be there. Rosalea sat down also, on her sleeping pallet, and put the puppy in the hollow of her crossed legs. He managed to cram most of his body into her thigh, hiding his face in the crook of her knee.
She silently stroked Nauru’s back, and he whimpered at her. They were all silent for a while. “All right, I have to check the bread,” she told Nauru. He didn’t respond, she started to stand up and he lay right where he was, frozen. Amalia slowly leaned forward and nosed him. At this, he screamed and turned and ran.
Amalia sighed and lunged, catching him in her mouth. The little pup squealed in sharp terror as Amalia picked him up. Rosalea sighed, flipping her flat bread. Amalia deposited the puppy between her front legs and made a box. The poor creature froze and whimpered helplessly. It was so small compared to Amalia, not even quite the size of her paw. When she caught him in her mouth, he was completely overwhelmed and engulfed.
“Come over here, Rosalea. See if you can’t calm him down a little. I want him to see that he doesn’t have to be scared of me so much.”
“Not muscling him around might be helpful,” Rosalea offered with a lopsided smile as she neared Amalia.
“What, like this?” Amalia asked, reaching forward and catching Rosalea’s shirt with her mouth and pulling her down. Rosalea staggered and landed roughly between her paws and found herself stuck the same way the pup was. The pup looked very startled at her as she landed just inches from him and was pinned in a like manner as he was. Despite herself, she began to laugh.
Amalia made mock pondering noises, pinning Rosalea down with a paw. “Let’s see,” she mused, pretending great seriousness. “I think it worked well on you, don’t you?”
Rosalea wriggled out from the paw, wriggling more toward Amalia’s body. “I cannot agree to that after you did it just to defy me,” Rosalea said mildly as she slid out and was now sitting upright between Amalia’s paws. The pup was still staring at her. She rubbed her fingers together above her lap and the pup, cautiously looking at Amalia looking down at them, moved forward and climbed into her lap. Rosalea began to stroke him, and he trembled, clinging to her like she was the only safe thing in the world.
“So,” Amalia said with a grin, laying her head lightly on Rosalea’s shoulder. “You were my pet. And I brought you a pet. What does that make your pet?”
Rosalea shrugged. “It kinda makes you like a dragon. Thinking humans are pets… but I think dragons also thinks that the humans’ pets belong to them.”
“Yes, this is true. I can’t really think of Nauru as belonging to anyone but you. And besides, he is related to me. It would be too weird to call him a pet.”
Rosalea stroked Amalia’s nose, since she had her head draped over her shoulder. She now had one hand stroking Nauru, and the other hand stroking the large wolf. After a while, perhaps because Rosalea felt so much at ease, the puppy began to relax and cautiously sniff the air around him, from the safe circle of Rosalea’s lap.
“So, how do patrols go?”
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“I think Conall’s outright lost some of his pack. The humans are rising to the occasion, unfortunately. Their tactics and weapons are improving. I… saw a pretty terrible spot at the base of a tree where the rabbits used to live. They have relocated their entire warren to avoid it.”
Rosalea frowned. “What happened?”
“One of them got hit with a poisoned arrow, and they said that he became a black monster with blood running from his eyes like tears. He killed another rabbit, and she transformed also, and so did the stag that had originally come to help, probably, but he ran off and hasn’t been seen since. There’s a path of death and destruction southwest of the woods that goes as far as the eye can see. The fire spread off of them and half-killed and half-twisted the plants. Mere cannot restore them, and others with strong plant affinity have not been able to restore them. The tree drips black sticky fluid into the ground that seems to soak into the other trees. Mother thinks it is a curse.”
Rosalea frowned, “It has to just be some sort of enchantment, right? Curses are not real.”
Amalia breathed out. “Is that something Kaylar taught you?”
Rosalea nodded, “And Ulric too. There is just magic and how you manage it,” she said.
“Dragons are generally very civilized creatures with an orderly, if sometimes coldly violent, approach to the world.” Amalia seemed to trail off, and Rosalea wondered if she was thinking about the captured mystics that had been taken away. “We do not manage magic the same way as mystics. We are connected to nature, and the borders on our abilities are not so strong. If a curse was to be born anywhere, it would be here.”
Rosalea still felt skeptical. “I think… Amalia, if I sneak into the town, I would be able to learn something about the poison. A mystic cannot cross into it, but I am not a mystic, right?”
Amalia fidgeted. “Maybe. I will ask mother, but I think we still want to prioritize keeping you safe.”
Rosalea sighed. “For a rumor of a prophecy that might not apply anymore… or did you get a commandment from Gods?”
Amalia licked her forehead and did not answer. Same way Fen liked to dodge questions, Rosalea thought as she continued petting both wolves.
***
Connall trusted her. What he said made sense to her. If the Moryshin would not lead and would stand idly by while they suffered and were killed, then something needed to be done. It felt like progress to her, to raid the merchants that dared to come through. It felt satisfying to kill the people who were trying to kill her family and her way of life.
So Raisa worked with his pack and enjoyed his praise, and she longed for an opportunity to confront the dragon a third time. She was quick, she was adept at dodging their clunky arrows.
But, today, was a less lucky day. She was attempting to run down some hunters with a younger mystic from his pack. “Please be careful, Sasha,” Raisa said softly. She was barely older than Miri, and Raisa felt too young to be doing these kinds of risky activities, but Connall had insisted.
So, they were lying in wait, watching. A steel trap? Raisa felt things were a little bit off as she watched. She was surprised so few of these humans were perceptive enough to notice her, she was not trying that hard to hide. She was mostly concealed in the brush, and she was very still, but they were so preoccupied with concealing the giant trap that they didn’t look up at her on the hillock.
Her overconfidence was her mistake. Humans had carefully, silently, crept their way around behind the two wolves. Sasha yelped and sounded an alarm. Raisa spun back to just try and charge, but they shot at her. She jumped, but her movement had been anticipated enough that an arrow caught her right in the left paw and exploded.
How dare they hurt me, she snarled as rage flooded through her instantly. I will burn them all. Her divine rage curled along her body as dark flames, flames they deserved to burn in. She got the first man by the shoulder, biting down, cracking bone, flinging him. It felt good. This is right. You all deserve to die.
Something grabbed onto her back foot, and she spun around to kill whatever it was, but she saw herself for a second, hanging onto Fen’s back leg, begging her not to go. “Please, Raisa! Stay with me!” Sasha squealed.
The fire went out, but while they just stood there, two arrows struck the pup and exploded. She didn’t have enough magic to even feel the rage take hold of her, she just dropped.
Raisa’s heart stopped and horror filled her. What had she been thinking?
Unable to put weight on her paw, she lunged forward and caught Sasha by the back of her neck and gimped on three paws and a whole lot of adrenaline out of there, narrowly dodging a trap that had probably been set for them.
***
Rosalea was surprised to hear Raisa calling for her. It was dark, but the moon was up. Both Bazil and Nakai were in the den, though no one else was. Nauru clung to her heels as she came out, and saw Raisa gimping into view, a wolf-pup about the size of Miri dangling from her mouth. She put her down as carefully as she could, but Rosalea saw the arrows in the bright moonlight.
“Help us, please.”
Nauru, on seeing someone from his pack, skulked back and hid in her shelter. Rosalea nodded and moved forward. The older puppy was badly hurt, she had an arrow near her ribs and one on the same side of her hind leg. Raisa’s paw was dripping blood and looked badly injured.
“Please, Sasha first,” Raisa begged.
Rosalea nodded. Sasha whimpered when Rosalea adjusted her, and her teeth all showed when she grimaced. Rosalea looked helplessly at Bazil, who moved forward and laid down, placing his head across her shoulders. Rosalea didn’t expect to be bitten on purpose, but she knew that this was going to be a painful business, and she didn’t want any instincts trying to remove her arm. However, when she went to pull the shaft – it slipped out of the wound with hardly any resistance. When Rosalea looked to see why, she saw that it didn’t seem to have an arrowhead. She thought that it must have separated somehow and become lodged in the muscle. She grimaced, it meant that she would have to stick her fingers into the wound, find it, and pull it out. She did not relish the idea in the slightest.
She carefully pushed a finger in, Sasha whimpered and then screamed as she touched something metal. She reached in carefully and pulled it out, but it seemed to come easier than she had expected. Once it was out, she realized why that was… it was only a shard of metal. The arrow had broken to pieces when it hit.
She showed it to Bazil who responded with a big-eyed look. “Sasha, sweetheart, I am sorry, this is going to take a while, and it isn’t going to feel good,” Rosalea murmured, stroking her side for a moment.
“I understand,” the pup whimpered in a way that broke Rosalea’s heart.
“Nakai, we are going to need Amalia’s magic,” Bazil said
After Rosalea got three or four pieces out, she started on the one for the ribs. She was not sure how many pieces she should be looking for… but the arrow by the ribs slid out with the same amount of resistance – it had also exploded.
“Put the pieces together,” Nakai said when Rosalea stared at it in dismay. “Reconstruct the arrow, then we will know you have them all.” After that, he turned and disappeared into the trees.
Quite sometime later, maybe more than an hour, Rosalea finally had two reassembled arrow heads… she hoped. She couldn’t account for all the clay chunks that had turned to muddy goo in the injury, but they had a four-bladed structure to them that seemed to house a hollow center for poison. Luckily Raisa had seen them after they had been shot at, so she was able to confirm it looked roughly right.
She worked on Raisa’s paw next. Nakai returned with everyone, and there was a big press of wolves around Rosalea as they tried to tend to Sasha as best as they could and make her comfortable. Most of the shards seemed to have fallen out of Raisa’s paw, but her fur and flesh were discolored, a sickly green-yellow.
This reminds me of something. I have seen this before. She could not remember where. She carefully bandaged Raisa’s foot since the overall injury was not as bad.
She was smeared with blood on her face, front, and hands. The stench of the coppery wolf blood had been making her ill… and now, as soon as her work was done, she was definitely starting to feel faint. She took her shirt off entirely to escape the smell and washed right away even though the water was icy. She started water boiling to clean her clothes. She hung them out, feeling sick and a little exhausted. Right as she finished, there was Nauru, holding the corner of her blanket up. She hugged him and wrapped it around her bare upper body since everything was drying. She held onto him and let herself feel calm, just a little bit at a time until she fell asleep.
In the morning, I am going to make them let me go after those herbs.