Spellscribed Tales: First Refrain (15 page)

She awoke in pain and fear. It was hard for her to breathe, to see, to do anything. It took her several seconds to realize she couldn’t see not because it was dark; her eyes still worked fine. The room was filled with smoke. The crackle of wood burning finally registered in her head.

Aching and badly bruised, she sat up. The brothers were gone, but not without having set the pile of crates on fire. Smoke filled the room, and she coughed as she crawled towards the door. Every cough caused knives of pain through her chest. She reached the door, and found it had been locked. They had set the fire, knowing she’d die inside. She didn’t know how long it had been, or how quickly the fire had spread. But she thought she could still hear the sound of water outside the tunnel.

She used the door latch to help her stand. Almost every inch of her body screamed in pain from a hundred different spots. Her vision swam, and she sank to her knees before she could get the door open. Everything was getting harder to focus on. Lifting her arm felt like it had weights strapped to her fingers and wrist, but she laboriously grasped the lock latch and twisted it. The door unlocked with a thunk.

Her arm dropped. She couldn’t go on, everything was too fuzzy, hurt too much. She passed out again, feeling the heat of the fire-warmed metal door on her forehead as she slipped away.

She awoke almost instantly when her weight pushed the door open a crack and water sprayed her in the face. Icy cold, it revived her enough to realize that her chance of surviving was better with the water elementals outside than with the fire inside. She pushed against the door, digging her knees and boots into the floor as best she could as she strained. She wasn’t very strong, but water started dribbling in from the cracked open door.

She was lucky that the water was entirely composed of elementals, not just water. If it had been water alone, the pressure would have sealed her fate. However, the elemental was doing its sweep of the sewer and found one of the side doors partially open. Following its arcane orders set in place hundreds of years before, the elemental knew it had to clean any open area of the sewer. While only open a crack, it didn’t differentiate fine details. As far as it was concerned, a door barely open was still open, and meant it was supposed to clean the room it exposed.

The door flung open, and Devinia barely managed to get a full breath of smoky air before the elemental blasted into the storage chamber. It swept her out of the room in an instant, and she struggled to hold in the smoky air and not choke on it. Bits of charred wood splinters shot past her
in the water, as well as burnt pieces of her personal effects. The brothers must have taken everything of value because only bits and pieces of trash spiraled past her.

Her chest convulsed as she involuntarily coughed while trying to hold her breath. Air burst from her lips, and she clamped her hands over her mouth. She clipped a wall several times as she was swept along. Darkness crept into the edges of her vision despite the chillingly cool water.

Her vision shrank, becoming a pinpoint of light. Then suddenly she was out of the water, flung through the air as she was disgorged out one of the sewer drains. She gasped air, and her sight rushed back to her painfully as she crashed into the mud. Water lapped around her sides as she lay, staring up at the night sky.

After minutes of doing nothing but relishing breathing, it registered that she could see the sky clearly. It meant that she was outside the city. Groaning in pain, and wondering why she was still alive, Devinia took stock. Her pack was missing, probably taken by the brothers too. Her secondary weapons were all gone. Her vials of poison, missing. She had nothing but the waterlogged clothes on her back.

It then occurred to her that they had her dagger. The one thing the assassin said she needed to keep with her. They had taken it, and left her to die.

As far as escalation goes, they handled it a bit heavily, but they made a mistake. She had survived. Devinia hurt too badly. She had nothing now. But if she wanted to reach her goal, she needed to get that dagger back.

And those brothers… They would pay.

Chapter: 03

Devinia trudged through the
Fiorache’Sora
with a heavy heart. She had lost everything, including the dagger that would open the path to the life she wanted. She had no safe places left in the city, since the brothers had found her only safehouse. It was time to risk finding the only other place she knew of.

When looking through her mother’s things, she had found a small map etched into a patch of leather. She had stared at it for several nights, trying to figure out where it was, until she realized that she had seen part of the map. In one corner of the map was a circular section that she figured was the plaza that Ashrava took her to before they were caught. With that in mind, she had a rough map detailing a path through the forest leading to some form of safe house or supply drop that Ashrava had put up in advance. Devinia had put the leather patch inside the sole of her left boot, but had committed the map to memory just in case.

Devinia had no idea what was there, but she had a good idea that her mother had prepared it in advance for survival in mind. In her battered state, Devinia wasn’t sure she could make it, but she had to try. At least she wasn’t being pursued by assassins like a year before.

In the darkness, many things thrived in the scraggly branches, creeper vines, and sunless shrubbery. She didn’t see much but traces of movement in her peripheral, but not many creatures ventured close to the edges of the forest. The Dancer in Darkness sometimes tried to slink into the city where it found the elves easier prey, which was the foremost reason for the wall of lights bordering the forest; the creature’s hide was literally incapable of surviving direct light.

As a predator, it was a supreme stalker. An example of what Sha’hdi aspired to be, they were well rendered in Sha’hdi art and culture, even though most elves hadn’t had the displeasure of meeting one in person. Vicious and nearly impossible to touch in hand to hand combat, the first few times that a Dancer in Darkness hunted in the city it took several master hunters and several hours to pin it down.

Devinia had never seen one either, but she had the feeling that she would soon. Battered and injured as she was
, any predators in the forest could likely smell her for hundreds of yards. She hesitated, her steps faltering.

Her mother had told her to shadowmeld through the forest as fast as possible. If it was such an advanced technique, then it was possible the creatures of the forest couldn’t find her in that state. As hurt as she was, much of the pain had faded to a dull ache and she was certain she could concentrate enough to slip into shadows.

She stepped into the darkness under a tree just within sight of the forest edge. The shadows slipped around her like a comforting blanket, the darkness feeling feathery soft compared to the harshness and light of the world outside. In the indistinct miasma of the shadowmeld, her injuries felt significantly lessened.

She raced through the forest, following the contour of the lightless land swifter than a wolf could run, more silent than an owl in flight. Her eyes allowed her to see through the murk and avoid predators and other animals hiding in the forest.

She traveled almost the whole way to the location indicated on her map when she felt the presence of something else hiding in the shadows. Slowing to a stop, Devinia carefully approached the source.

In the cover of an oversized root, a Dancer in Darkness crouched, waiting patiently with its attention drawn somewhere other than her. It took her a few seconds to realize that the creature wasn’t just hiding in the shadow, but was at least partially melded with it. She felt a moment of surprise run through her, but fear was strangely absent. She had seen depictions of them in the city, but not even an elven artist had been able to render the power and grace of the creature.

The creature was catlike, with golden eyes that were the only things truly clear and defined about it. It had two oversized ears, a sleek, agile build, and it was covered in black hide that looked to be composed of incredibly soft, ever-shifting fur. She could see it had an oversized square jaw full of razor sharp teeth like needles as long as her little finger. Its paws were large enough to conceal claws as large as daggers. Its tail was long and thick at the base, tapering to a fuzzy spiked tuft at the end, nearly a whole body length behind it.

She watched it for several seconds before she realized that she could almost see through its hide. When it shifted, she could see translucent glimpses of muscle and bone underneath as if the skin of the beast was not darkly colored fur and skin, but rather it was darkness itself wrapped in form. The creature glanced in her direction, flicked its ears and turned back to its hunt.

Devinia had never before thought that someone or something could see her while she was melded into the shadows. It was an advanced skill that she had learned, the only thing that she could do better than most of her elder brethren. She had been taught that when a Sha’hdi was melded into the shadow, they became as part of it, indistinguishable from it to everyone.

Even when she was melded into the shadows and someone or something else moved through it, she could only tell there was someone within close proximity. The creature not only saw
her, but had seen her from thirty yards away without effort. In the split second of the glance, Devinia knew it had seen her; their identical eyes had met.

It moved, slinking over the root and disappearing from her sight. It seemed to half move in the physical world, half through the very darkness it hid within. Its body blurred as it skulked forward, only becoming distinct when the creature was at rest. Devinia moved forward to keep it in sight without concern for her well-being; she had become numb to fear some time ago, and she no longer cared to get it back.

There was a depression in the topography of the forest, leading to a natural gully where water pooled. Trees flanked the upper edges of the gully, leaving a relatively large clearing on the ground despite the thick canopy above. Thick, illuminant moss grew along the edges of the water among the rocks and dirt. Its soft glow gave the water a reflective sheen that radiated soft light barely visible unless one was looking directly at it.

Devinia had been taught about the
Forest of Night Eternal during her tutelage. The forest had natural lighting the deeper in one went. Glowing moss and lichens, fireflies and even fungal blooms that were as beautiful as they were deadly, were common deeper within the woods.

She lost track of the creature among the glow and ripple of the water. Sighing, Devinia turned away and set off down in the direction her map had her follow. She nearly ran straight into it.

The beast was directly in front of her path, watching her. She came to a halt, frozen. The fear she had not felt before gave out a strangled yelp as it attempted to resurface before she swallowed it down again.

Her gaze locked with the beast, and for the moment it didn’t seem to be aggressive. It only watched her with interest.

Devinia felt a sort of kinship with the creature. All alone, with only the shadows to protect her, she had much in common with it.

The Dancer in Darkness turned its attention from her, and looked back over the water. She followed its gaze, seeing a herd of Eiloiche cresting the banks and coming down for a drink. Smaller than many elk found elsewhere, the elk of the
Forest of Night Eternal were dark furred, with spots and streaks of light bioluminescent blue that looked almost like the silhouette of people from a distance. Observers from afar had seen herds moving by that looked almost like there was a tribe of glowing men watching over them. Up close, they were beautiful and majestic.

The stalker next to her slipped closer, using the trees as cover. Devinia immediately got the picture; there was its dinner, time to go. She continued on her journey, all the while glad the Eiloiche had shown up. If not, it may have decided to eat her instead.

She was fortunate to not have any other encounters along her way. The spot at the end of the map was a tree that looked completely ordinary. Only by examining it carefully was she able to see marking in elvish that would have been entirely invisible to anyone who didn’t have the eyes. She climbed, and up in the high branches she found that several of them had been shaped to form a small room. Pulling herself in, she found that it was well camouflaged against casual observation. There were also a couple of jars, bedding, blankets, a bundle of leather clothing sized for her mother, and a small chest fetched up against the trunk of the tree.

Finally, she was able to ease down onto the bed and try to relax. She had found her mother’s safe haven, a place deep in the woods where all but the best hunters would be unwilling to follow. For at least a few moments, she would be safe.

Her tension eased and she became aware again how much everything hurt. The brothers had beaten her severely before nearly succeeding at suffocating her in her own room. Her ribs hurt, but didn’t seem broken. Her face had been stained with blood from her nose before she had nearly been drowned escaping from the fire. And now her stomach growled at her angrily.

She opened the first of the jars, finding it full of dried fruits, one of Ashrava’s favorites. She didn’t dislike them, and she was hungry so she chewed on a few while she looked through the other jar. There were nuts of varying types in that one; already shelled and preserved. The nutmeats also helped cut into her hunger, but she had to force herself to go slowly or else she would make herself sick or worse, full. She feared that if she were full, she would be too tired to do anything but sleep, and sleep was not something she could afford to do yet.

The chest held her salvation. Within it was a satin lined block with eight holes in it. Each hole held a thin stoppered glass vial. Devinia pulled one out and shook it. A thick fluid sloshed inside, but it wasn’t one she recognized. It definitely didn’t look like the ones that had been in her mother’s pack. Putting it back she found that the elven word for healing, Aishgainte, was embroidered in the silk on the inside of the lid. All eight vials contained what appeared to be the same liquid.

Taking a gamble, she unstoppered one of the vials, tipping it over until a drop of the liquid fell onto her fingertip. She put the vial back and waited several seconds watching. The drop quivered on her finger, but it didn’t burn, or seep into her skin, or make it numb or change her skin color by
contact. Best as she could tell, if it was poison, it would have to be the kind that was ingested. Steeling herself, she popped her finger into her mouth and licked up the droplet.

Whatever it was, it tasted somewhat like mint and her tongue felt for a moment as warmth spread across it, like she had taken a sip of brandy. Devinia waited, but nothing else happened. She frowned, and it was then that she realized that the cuts in her gums and the split on her lip had healed enough that they no longer hurt. Touching her lip, she could confirm it was actually healed and it hadn’t just gone numb.

She downed the rest of the elixir in a hurry, swallowing the whole thing in one gulp. The strong minty warmth rolled down into her stomach and spread through her body from there. Her labored breathing eased, and relief flooded in the wake of the warmth of healing. She sagged against the bedding, almost fainting from the lack of pain.

Something was hard under the bedding, the edge biting into her shoulder blades as she reclined. Digging under the padding, she found some things that gave her a bit of hope.

There was a small metal plate, a tube of metal containing a firegem, and a knife. One of Ashrava’s daggers had been hidden under the mattress. Only nine inches long from tip to pommel, it was only going to be useful up close. Her mother’s name, Ashrava, had been engraved upon the side of the blade, marking it as a gift that her father had acquired for her. Feeling renewed, Devinia found a smile creeping back on her face as she looked down at her mother’s dagger. She knew just which two people she most wanted to practice her work up close with.

Her immediate pains had faded, but as she bent to climb out of the safe haven something inside suddenly stabbed out in pain, and she fell back onto the mattress with a groan. The potion had healed many of her injuries, but had not been strong enough to heal all of the worst injuries. She considered taking the next potion, but checked herself.

Now that the urgency of her condition had passed, she was able to think more clearly. The brothers thought her dead, so they wouldn’t be looking for her. They also had her dagger, but an assassin’s dagger was not something anyone would be willing to peddle. Stories of what happened to someone daring enough to steal one and try to sell it were enough of a deterrent that most didn’t want to risk buying one, much less selling it.

From what she saw of the brothers, she figured them for the cowards they were. They didn’t fight her when she had the advantage, and only attacked when they could surprise and gang up on her. They wouldn’t have the stones to try selling the knife. This meant they would keep it, and she could take her time getting back to them.

She was then free to take time recovering. The potions worked fast, and would be more useful to her if she were injured severely. Now, she could heal up as long as she didn’t take any risks.

She couldn’t help it, but she slipped into sleep the moment the pain faded into a dull throb. She had been nearly killed many times that day, and her young body just couldn’t handle any more. She slept deeply, unaware of the tremble of something else climbing the trunk of the tree.