by Paul Kite
In the middle of the second day, the first attack on the village was made. Three adult brown bears and two, only slightly smaller, forest cats, somehow got into the back of the village, where there was a stable. They killed almost all the horses and the groom, who’d tried to fight them. Only three horses were saved by the men, led by the headman, and his two strong, but slightly stupid, sons. There were no more attacks that day, although, from time to time, the watchmen noticed beasts, rushing around at a safe distance from the village. These beasts were gray wolves and desert hyenas, that didn’t live in the Dark Forest.
The second attack had happened this afternoon. It’d come from both sides, at the gate, a distraction, and behind the village. They came through a tunnel leading to one of the sheds with the straw and feed for the cattle. Fortunately, the residents had managed to fight back without a single loss and even wounded one of the shapeshifters! But they lost all the remaining horses, because they’d been the target of the attack. The shapeshifters had persistently deprived the people of any opportunity to send for help again.
And by nightfall that same day, we’d gotten here.
Having heard the story, Dazrael considered it, then said. “Call the hunter.”
“Manria,” the headman immediately responded, turning to his wife, “ask one of our sons to reach Rokshan, have him come here.”
The woman stood up from the table, opened the door and went into the next room.
“How many shifters were there?” the light elf asked the old man.
“We didn't count them,” the man shrugged. “The animals all looked alike. I think at least a dozen, for sure!”
“That’s bad,” the Master of Shadows said quietly, “and very strange! What could so many shifters be doing near such an unremarkable village?”
I mentally agreed with Dazrael. It all looked too suspicious—werewolves, mages from the capital and the village under the protection of the Guild ‘Elghinn Dal Veldrin.’
I tried to find a connection between all of the above. A seditious thought crept into my head–were we guilty of the attacks on the village?
The sharp sound of the door being opened distracted me from my thoughts.
“Rokshan,” the headman waved his hand, inviting the hunter to the table.
Hmm, wow, ‘an older hunter who reads tracks well,’ I remembered the description given by the headman, a description of this tall, wiry man of about fifty, with a bushy, black beard and a completely bald head. The description had definitely not done him justice.
His clothes were made from strong, tanned leather. He had a quiver with glowing, light blue arrows, and a large, blocky bow made from old wood, reinforced with steel inserts. Well, he was a hunter, and, most likely, it wasn’t only a profession but a character class as well.
Dazrael also looked at him very carefully and respect, mixed with a bit of surprise, was evident in his look, as if the elf had realized who was in front of him. He seemed to wish to say something or ask about something, but suddenly changed his mind.
Rokshan only glanced at me, but looked at the elf carefully. He squinted his eyes, and a moment later, discontent, coupled with irritation, appeared on his face for a few moments. I thought the hunter understood perfectly who Dazrael was. But why didn't he like the Shadow Master? What caused these emotions—hostility to all the Shadows or to this light elf in particular? Was it due to Dazrael's nickname—Gray Fox?
“Rovar, why have you called me?” Rokshan said in a deep, rumbling voice, sitting down on chair at the table, away from us.
The headman nodded at Dazrael, as if deferring to the elf.
“Can you lead us to the shifters?” the Shadow Master asked.
“Do you doubt me?” frowning, the hunter asked. “I can bring you to the shifters and kill them, too. Are the Shadows capable of doing anything…” the man laughed, thus confirming my suspicions about his hostility either to the Shadows or the elf himself, “...except stabbing people in the back? You didn't come here to help us, I think,” Rokshan spat through clenched teeth. “I hate you!”
Dazrael grit his teeth; it was evident that the words were very unpleasant for him to hear, but he restrained himself and continued the conversation.
“We,” the elf emphasized the word, “never abandon those who are loyal to us! Remember, Raven! Never! Just take us to these damn shifters, and I can do the rest myself. Well…” he hesitated for a moment, then continued, “you know very well that I can’t read the tracks... of animals, and they are unlikely to appear in human guise at the village.”
Raven? Oh! There’s a secret here. What does ‘Raven’ mean? Is that a nickname or something else? Is it the name of the Guild? Oh, if only someone were to tell me what's going on here! I thought.
An awkward pause followed.
The hunter was thoughtfully looking into a mug (judging by the smell, filled with some strong alcohol), which the old man had handed him hastily. The elf was nervously twisting a fork in his hand; I had a feeling that he was going to use it instead of a dagger, and Rovar's fingers were tapping on the table. Then the hunter drained the mug with several deep gulps and put it back on the table with a loud thud.
“Okay, I'll help you,” Rokshan said. “You won't find them without me. But you'll personally owe me, not your guild of assassins, or your disciple,” he waved his hand at me, “but you personally!” The hunter stood up and, leaning on the table with his hands, caught the elf's gaze, as if inviting him to play a game of ‘eye to eye’, wanting to find out who would look away first.
Absolute silence came over the table. The fork was bent in half once, then a second time, and finally, it turned into a crumpled piece of metal. The old man's fingers froze over the table, and he anxiously looked from the Master of Shadows to the hunter and back.
“I agree!” the elf said suddenly and then hurriedly added, “But with some conditions.”
“What do you take me for?” the hunter replied with a relaxed smile, sitting back. “Of course, with the conditions that we will discuss later. I'm not asking for anything that would hurt your honor or your personal integrity. If you still have those, of course,” came another verbal dig at the Master of Shadows. I had the feeling that he liked angering the elf and walking on the edge. “When are we going hunting?”
“We'll meet you at the gate in three hours,” the elf replied without hesitation.
“Hm, we'll be hunting tonight. I don’t doubt it. But what about your student?”
“He'll handle everything,” Dazrael answered for me.
“Then I'll go get ready,” Rokshan got up from the table and headed for the exit.
That's great! Doesn’t anyone care about what I think or what I’d like to say? Well, Vegor be with you, or maybe some other gods.
The elf was lost in thought, and I was eating a delicious salad.
“Rovar!” Dazrael shouted sharply.
Damn... I nearly choked to death on my food. Why is he being so loud? Ah, the headman had dozed off and I hadn’t noticed. He’d folded his hands and put his head on top of them in order to make you think he wasn’t sleeping.
“Yeah!?” the old man blinked sleepily.
“Do you have any scrolls, potions?” In principle, that’s the right thing to do, we have to save ours, I agreed with the Master of Shadows.
“Where from, Gray?!” Rovar was confused. “We don’t live in a city; we’ve never had such things. We have no healer or magician, either.”
“Rovar! Scrolls and potions!” The elf had steel in his voice.
“Oh, yes!” The headman immediately jumped up from his chair and rushed to the room next to the living room. “I remember now; we do have some!” There was a cry from the room. “How much do you need?”
“Bring everything here, I will pick something out myself.”
There was some kind of crashing, the creaking of ungreased hinges, ringing, rustling paper and a quiet, on the verge of hearing, whisper, “So, we don't have this... Mmm, I won't
give it up.”
“I! Can! Hear! Everything!” Said Dazrael, each word separate and loud.
The headman swore vehemently, muttering, “I wish Vegor would trample your long ears …”
Great thinking! To curse the light elf, who’s joined the dark elves’ clan, with the name of the patron god of the latter... That’s real nonsense.
And what if Dazrael has two patron gods? Wait, haven’t I thought about this before? Onarkis—from birth, and Vegor—by belonging to the Shadows. I wonder how they solve the issue of who has the right to rule over him? Peacefully or with periodic fights? Or maybe...
Oh, I shouldn’t think about it!
The loud bell rang not only in my ears, but felt like it was filling my head as well! Everything went black, it became difficult to breathe, and my body was completely numb. Moreover, I felt a tight, squeezing pain in my chest, like a vise on my heart, not horrific, but still highly unpleasant and worrisome.
You are under the influence of a divine power. The Gods Onarkis and Vegor have turned their gazes on you. Be careful about your thoughts and conjectures. It’s not worth disturbing the higher forces.
This message was burned into my eyes, it felt like.
"Yes! Got it! I’ll shut up!” I howled.
But it seemed to not be enough to the gods, or rather, the AIs. A spasm twisted me up, as if every bone in my body had been turned inside out, and every cell of my body was filled with pain... No—with PAIN!... and I lost consciousness...
When I regained consciousness and was able to finally concentrate on my surroundings, I saw that the elf was sorting out a pile of various scrolls and potions, putting aside the ones he wasn’t interested in for the headman. And there were two more piles (one was big and the other one was small), where the Master of Shadows had sorted out what he considered necessary. They weren’t the least bit interested in what had happened to me and why I’d ended up writhing in agony before passing out.
“Thank you for worrying about me. I’m alive and well. And in my right mind.” I muttered, mentally swearing not to mention any gods, ever again, at all.
“What?” The headman turned to me. “I thought you’d taken a nap. And Dazrael said not to wake you up.”
“A nap?” My eyes became round, but I didn’t try to persuade them that something else had happened.
Yeah, of course, a nap. And I’d had a terrible dream!
“Finally awake?! Then help me. There’s an hour left until we leave,” the elf said, squinting his eyes at me.
Wow, I’d been unconscious for almost two hours!
The elf explained what was most important among the things brought by the headman, I nodded, and began to help him. The larger pile of scrolls and potions was meant for Dazrael, and the smaller one—for me. It was not a fair division, of course, but the Master of Shadows promised to share.
I threw ten potions of life, six potions of mana, three scrolls of healing, two poisons that’d been imposed on weapons, one canopy of complete silence, calculated to cover about thirty steps, six potions of night vision, two potions of endurance restoration and one for increasing the chance for critical damage into my bag, then waited for the elf to do the same, and we went to the gate.
We waited for another half hour, and then Rokshan appeared. He hadn’t changed his clothes, only added some arrows with a dull, reddish glow to the quiver, and he replaced his bow with one of the same size, but made of ebony and reinforced... I couldn’t believe my eyes, with strips of mithril! It's frightening how much that would cost! He’s not a simple hunter, that’s for certain.
“As the last attack was at the back of the village, let's start from there.” Rokshan was the first to go out of the gate and went to the indicated place. We followed him, but first, I drunk one of the potions of night vision, which the elf had advised me to do.
And why did we start from there? There were a lot of traces. Very different ones, too! As we walked, I definitely noticed at least a couple dozen of them. But I wasn’t sure that they’d been left by the shapeshifters.
“Yeah, here it is!” The hunter went down to one knee, carefully looking for something in the crumpled grass. “Hmm, no, not that,” he said disappointedly, and, walking a dozen steps toward the forest, looked again. “Yes, I’ve found it! Follow me,” Rokshan beckoned us with his hand, moving in the direction of a huge boulder, overgrown with moss and with bushes all around it. “They started digging a tunnel here.” We saw a deep, wide hole, going down at an oblique angle. “In the village, in the barn, we buried it immediately, after we repulsed the attack,” Rokshan added, “but didn’t dare to investigate where it led.” The hunter sat down again and almost sniffed the area around the entrance to the tunnel. “Three went in there,” he pointed to the left side, “five went there,” the hunter's hand moved to the right. “I think it’s better to follow the first group.”
Following the hunter, we entered the forest. Here, Rokshan stayed in one place for a long time, studying multiple tracks, sometimes went back a short distance, shook his head disappointedly, cursed, but eventually found the right trail, the one that the shapeshifters had left. We moved slowly and carefully, using all the skills and abilities available to us. We periodically lost sight of the elf. He would scout the surrounding space, afraid of a possible ambush. The hunter didn’t understand why, after every twenty yards, the elf would put a small bag of coarse cloth on the ground.
“Well, they aren’t fools, they tried to delay and misguide pursuers,” Rokshan muttered. “Appearing here, they scared away many animals, of course, but greatly assisted me in the hunt. It would’ve been difficult had the animals stuck around. I would’ve been hard pressed to distinguish the tracks of some species of wolves from the traces of shapeshifters in the guise of the same animal or-”
“Shh!” Dazrael suddenly interrupted the hunter. “On the left, there!” he motioned with his hand.
The hunter reacted instantly. Bringing up his bow, he released three red arrows in the specified direction, one by one. We heard a quiet whining, which was immediately interrupted by a blue arrow.
“Check it!” I heard the order of the light elf and, activating my invisibility, I made my way to the defeated enemy through the bushes.
It was gross. I came out of the invisibility near a dead... being. He had a creepy animal mask instead of a face, pieces of hair on an almost human torso, with arms ending in paws. The shifter had frozen in the middle of the process of changing his appearance from a cat into a man.
“Magic, imposed on red arrows,” the hunter appeared behind my back, “slows down the regeneration of werewolves,” he explained to me, nodding at the corpse. “It's unpleasant, isn't it?”
“He must’ve been a sentinel,” the elf approached us. “Judging by the fact that we killed him very easily and quickly, he was one of the weakest members of this pitiful tribe. Perhaps another older and stronger werewolf is wandering around.”
‘The weakest’ was a weird way to explain it. I would be wary of meeting even such a ‘weak’ opponent, for I had no idea what they were capable of in an animal form, with a human’s cunning and devious mind.
Of course, the hunter and the elf viewed such opponents as weak, but they were NPCs that had high levels and Rokshan wasn’t a simple hunter!
“Most likely, the shapeshifters are gone,” the hunter guessed, “and maybe they’ve already sensed something. He was probably sent by an elder, to be a probe of sorts, his death giving advanced warning perhaps.”
“Kraven, lay low just in case,” the elf started giving orders. “Rokshan, check where exactly he came from. I’ll be waiting here and support you if they attack.”
The hunter and the elf disappeared in the thicket and I chose the bushes beside the dead man to hide in, waiting for the cooldown on my invisibility to come back up. I had an excellent view of everything, and I would’ve had the time I needed to react if the enemy appeared…
“Gr-r-r-r,” a growling sound came, and not
far from me, a shifter in the form of a bear began to appear, periodically flickering and dissolving into the air; it was a hefty bear— 5 feet tall, his paws were of the size of my head, and its mouth was full of razor-sharp teeth.
And what is this masking skill it has, on the verge of being too absurd, even for a fantasy world? I don’t remember such a spell! What shall I do now? Attack? That’s risky business, because who knows what kind of magic he has in his repertoire. Although, if he finds me, he will be the one starting the fight, and then I will have little chance of winning! I thought.
So what about my invisibility? Oh! Well, it’s already available again. I immediately activated it and left the bushes without moving a single branch. Then I walked around slowly and tried to sneak up on the sniffing shifter from the back, while he was still distracted by the arrows, moving one of them with his paw. Then his gaze stopped on the prints left by our shoes. We'd trampled there a lot.
I took three steps and I was where I needed to be.
But then the bear suddenly raised its head, noisily sucked air into its nostrils and nervously slashed its clawed paw along the ground. Had he really smelled me?
I stopped hesitating and jumped on his back. I struck him in the neck with a materialized Dagger of Chaos. The double hit worked! Blood spurted, and the beast roared wildly and started to spin like a whirligig. This was one agile bear! Grabbing his fur with one hand, and squeezing the handle of the blade I hadn’t taken out of the wound with my other, I tried not to fall off.
But the beast managed to throw me off its back. It immediately jumped aside, obviously furious.
I made a somersault and got right back to my feet. The dagger in my hand disappeared, obeying my mental command, and I drew my swords and assumed a defensive stance. It felt more convenient, using the weapons I’d grown used to.
The shapeshifter was shaking due to its thirst for blood, from the desire to tear the enemy apart! His mouth was stretched in a vicious grin, and saliva dripped onto the ground. Without warning or hesitation, he ran in and jumped on me.