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Hunting in Ember - Chapter Two

    • 231 posts
    March 5, 2021 6:32 AM PST

    Chapter Two

     

    Clouds of insects drift through a sunbeam, and something stirs the undergrowth beneath the branch where Sinsera lies watching. Her arms dangle down as if she is a cat napping on a branch in the afternoon, but she is far from sleep.

    The rumble of the approaching herd sounds through the forest. Sinsera shifts her weight to one side of the branch and waits. As the woodland striders pass beneath her, she drops to the ground and begins to run among them.

    Their eyes glance over, but they accept her running with them. Her awareness narrows to a small world, avoiding all the movements of bone and horn, and trying to keep from tripping over a stone that would send her falling underhoof.

    For a long time, nothing exists but the animals around her, muscles working as she strains to keep up with them. Now she is not an Elf, but a member of the herd, running together for no reason but the joy of racing through the forest. Vines reach down to beckon them on.

    Then there is a change in the spirit of the run. The striders’ eyes grow large, and a scent of desperation gathers around the herd. As the striders leap over the crest of a hill, Sinsera grabs a vine and swings upward, then turns and sweeps back down toward what is chasing after the herd.

    It runs fast on many legs—far too many legs—and as Sinsera swings toward it, the creature’s front half rises to the height of an Elf and spits a viscous green fluid toward her.

    She drops from the vine and rolls away from the acid, then draws both long knives and tries to run around the head.

    But it is fast, and the front of its body drops back to the ground, many legs scurrying and a wet sound from its head like someone breathing through the fens of the Murk as it curls around to seek her.

    She dodges away into a roll as it spits acid again from probing lengths of flesh above its head. The acid burns through a nearby branch until it drips onto the forest floor. But she is already moving.

    How does it know where I am? For she sees nothing that looks like an eye or eyes, only several things emerging from around its mouth and head, sharp or feathery or thick with slime. She runs toward the back half of the creature to see if she can wound it somehow, but it rolls part of its body over, showing her all the wiggling feet underneath, and then the entire back half of the creature begins to swing toward her, as if it to grasp and wrap around her like a snake would a rat.

    She leaps for another vine and swiftly moves up, straining against the pull of the earth and trying to reach the nearest branch.

    Now the creature turns and raises the front half of its body once more, questing toward her legs where they hang underneath as she climbs.

    Then arrows out of the south, and the creature makes a sound like a young wounded boar screaming in pain. Haneval is running through the mist firing arrows into whatever seems to be its head. As he closes he tosses the bow to one side and draws short curved swords.

    Sinsera jumps down onto the creature’s back and helps him finish it off. Then she leaps to one side, breathing hard.

    Haneval stares down at what they killed. “I haven’t seen one of these in a long time,” he says. “Not long enough.”

    “It was good of you to come,” says Sinsera.

    “It was an accident.” He turns and looks at her with long-suffering eyes. “Let me guess, you were running with another herd and turned to fight off a predator.”

    She nods slowly, and “Again,” he says. He sheaths his blades and turns to pick up his bow.

    ❖ ❖ ❖

    The waterfall shines lazy in the afternoon sunlight, spinning an arc of color into the air. Haneval stands watch on the forest around while Sinsera washes off the slime of the battle.

    She says something he cannot hear above the roar of the waterfall. He turns and sees her tying a bracer to her wrist. Then she nods toward the path.

    Sunlight spills down from leaves, playing with the glow of plants and flowers along the rolling ground. The land around them rocks and rises and falls like a stormy sea frozen in time, and sprawling trees crouch at the edges of ravines. One old tree whose time has come lies across a cluster of rocks above them. Moss blankets a bed of stones.

    Sinsera pauses often to caress a vine or a glowing flower. She is young and gangly, with an unkempt nest of ragdoll hair, and thin chains drape from silver rings on the points of her ears. She came to the Wardens even scruffier than she is now, with poor quality leathers and a wild look in her remaining eye like something out of deepest Oldwood. But her skills impressed him, and he does not question her dedication.

    “What do you seek,” he says at last, “when you run with them?”

    “I do not know,” she answers. “Nothing I can say with words in the language of Elves.”

    Small spindly trees drape grasping branches over the path. Sinsera will sometimes slow to brush fingers across a branch or trunk as she passes by. A gentle question to which Haneval can hear no answer.

    Bright flowers and a speckling of leaf shadows fill the path as they walk. Sinsera listens as Haneval points out some plant or formation she might not have learned yet. At times he feels certain that she already knows something of what he speaks about, yet she listens carefully every time.

    He briefly wonders if she has developed feelings for him beyond respect and loyalty to a fellow Warden—but she listens as avidly to Airisu, or to any of the others.

    “You ran out there without your bow,” he says. “I suppose you want me to hide this from Airisu.”

    She frowns briefly, then says, “I think she would understand, but I’ll talk to her.” Her frown deepens as she looks around.

    “What is it?” he asks, but she shakes her head and continues on.

    “Does anything feel off to you?” she says after a moment.

    “Other than killing a predator with so many legs? No.”

    “It’s just a monster, Han,” says Sinsera. “The woods are loud and crawling with animals and insects, so many forms of life, and some of them—I know Airisu would scold me if I said this at the Tower, but some of them are monsters. Arrows and a blade kill them when they need to be killed.”

    “When you remember to bring your bow.”

    She sighs. “I didn’t forget.”

    “I know.” He watches a flock of tiny birds lift off from a branch ahead of them. “We have a responsibility to care for the forest, to allow life to flourish, the hunt of predator and prey… but there is a balance. This is part of Faerthale, and it’s the only home we have.”

    She gives him a rare smile. “You’re talking in Ashen again.”

    “I’m not… What does that mean, Sin? Ember or Ashen, we all speak the same language.”

    “Do you? Are you looking at the same world, dreaming of the same past and future? Telling the same stories?”

    “You tell me. Do Airisu and I tell different stories?”

    “Sometimes. Other times you both sound like any other Elf.”

    “That’s what I mean. You don’t have to choose a path. You’re a Warden, and that’s enough. You can remain just an Elf like any other.”

    For a moment she frowns again. Then suddenly they hear a tolling as if all of Oldwood were a bell that has lain silent for an age, and is now sounded once more. Haneval looks around him, but sees nothing.

    What was that?” he says.

    “Something is wrong.”

    “Where was it?”

    “I cannot tell.”

    When the forest does not sound again, he says, “We need to investigate this.”

    “How? It was all around us.”

    He realizes he’s been trying to hold his breath while listening. “We should at least report to Airisu.”

    Red Leaf Tower rises along one edge of Faerthale Forest, bordering on Oldwood. The eight-sided tower is made of white stone with hints of the Lucent in shining silver fretwork that flows up the walls. The roof glows in the afternoon sun.

    “I’ll race you,” Sinsera says, and she is off, dashing with a laugh toward the Tower.

    “I’m not falling for that again,” mutters Haneval.

    He looks up at the observation deck beneath the roof and sees the shine of a messenger glasswing taking flight. Heading west; it could be bearing a message to Silvergrass, or Roe Strider, or Water Crane—any of the Towers in that direction.

    He heads toward the doors and a meeting with Airisu that he doesn’t know how to begin.

    ❖ ❖ ❖

    Airisu’s gaze follows a murmuring of small birds across the sky. The forest is all around the observation deck of Red Leaf Tower, with the wind playing in branches that have been there longer than any of the Wardens have been alive. Both restless and patient, those trees.

    The same, perhaps, could be said about their newest Warden, who can be very silent when she wants, yet fidgets at other times without seeming to realize it.

    At last Airisu turns to regard her. Sinsera is about the right age to be her daughter, if she hadn’t set her feet firmly upon the path of Warden for many years.

    “How was your run?”

    Sinsera shrugs and reaches up to fiddle with her eye patch again.

    “It was good, until the… creature,” she says. “It’s like a part of the forest, them running, and I become part of the forest when I run with them.”

    “Being a Warden is nearly as close as an Elf can come to being part of these woods.”

    “I know, I just…” She still looks out at the forest, the clouds. Finally she turns and meets Airisu’s eyes. “I can’t explain it.”

    “I didn’t ask you here to reprimand you.”

    “Good, because I hate…” Sinsera stops and looks out again.

    Airisu smiles slightly. “As long as you patrol when you should, and support your fellow Wardens, then I encourage you to seek communion with Oldwood.”

    “Really?”

    “You made a commitment to be part of the forest. We each have our own way of walking the path.”

    Sinsera nods, and her eyes drift toward the trees again.

    “You’ve been a Warden almost six months now,” continues Airisu. “I think it’s time we went on a hunt that will test your skills, and find out for what path the forest is calling you. But not today.”

    “Did Haneval tell you what we heard?”

    “Yes, and we heard it here as well. I have sent a message to Silvergrass tower. I hope that soon we shall know more of what occurred.”

    When Sinsera continues to fidget, Airisu says, “What troubles you? I have never seen you this skittish.”

    Sinsera meets her eyes. “Something feels wrong. I feel… I don’t know.”

    Airisu regards her for a moment, then says, “Perhaps it is not your imagination. Hopefully we will know more when Commander Eiriskeen responds to my message.”

    Feeling suddenly weary, she makes a vague gesture to end the conversation. The younger woman moves toward the stairwell.

    “Wait,” she says suddenly, and Sinsera turns. On impulse, she says, “Faerthale is your home. That is what I want you to remember. Our lands and our people are your home, and they always will be.”

    Sinsera stares at her with eyes that seem to drink these words like water. Then she nods and descends into the Tower.

    ❖ ❖ ❖ 

    Stairs spiral inside the wall of Red Leaf Tower, with a landing at each level. At the landings are doors leading into small cells where the Wardens sleep; in each there is a cot, a chest, a wash basin, and a wall rack for armor and weapons.

    The lowest level is larger than the rest of the Tower, serving as a gathering room for the six stationed here, with a table and simple cooking area. In this twilight before night, Eyirie is on the observation deck above, wrapped in warm clothes against the rain, while Suomen and Tanen are out patrolling.

    The rain can’t decide which way it wants to fall. Every time the wind changes direction, the downpour seems to hesitate, to hang in the air as if coasting on wet wings, uncertain about the ground. A moment later the waterdrops fall as if they were never afraid.

    Haneval sits at the table in the gathering room, fiddling with a lantern. Even though the air inside is still, the flame is anxious, turning this way and that as if looking for someone to whom it can tell its secrets.

    Airisu and Sinsera are across the table, talking together in low voices over a guttering candle. The tension in their voices has been building for some time now. Tanen is late returning , and the heavy sky outside the window is fast moving toward utter dark.

    Suddenly the door opens, and the wind is in the room with them. Though Suomen quickly closes the door, the candle flame dies at last. In the light of Haneval’s lantern, they can see that Suomen is not alone. There is a man with him, a tall Elf in the cool earthy colors that Ashen Elves are fond of, like the woods under the moonslight. He is of some years, older than Airisu.

    But his clothes are torn and filthy, his hair is ragged, and there is a look in his eyes more ragged still. At his belt is a wand topped by a blue crystal. His face is white where he has coated his skin with fresh ash.

    He stares widely around the room with the eyes of someone afraid of shadows and the unknown.

    Airisu turns to Sinsera. “Bring towels to dry our guest.”

    Sinsera stands to go. But then the visitor speaks.

    “No,” he says in a trembling voice. “Don’t. It’s all wrong. Don’t.”

    He repeats these words until well into the night, when he passes finally into sleep.

     

    Read Chapter Three at https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/12811/hunting-in-ember-chapter-three

     


    This post was edited by Crowsinger at March 11, 2021 7:56 AM PST
    • 337 posts
    March 16, 2021 11:42 AM PDT

    This was a good one, Crow.  It's not often you slip in a fight scene, but you do pace them well.  They're easy to follow the action in your mind.

    • 231 posts
    March 16, 2021 2:41 PM PDT

    Fight scenes are the hardest thing ever. I'll just put a fight scene doc in Scrivener and it stays empty until I'm in the right head space for that.

    I'm glad you think they seem to work, since I really can't tell.


    This post was edited by Crowsinger at March 21, 2021 5:25 AM PDT