It also meant that things like theft were punished more severely than in other countries. The Sha’hdi side of Salthimere had more death penalty offenses than even the barbaric humans had. Devinia had to be cautious, but as time passed her caution became ingrained in her. Being prepared and ready for anything was second nature to her.
However, she hadn’t been prepared to be hit where she had made her own home.
Devinia entered the sewers and knew something was wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. On edge, she moved stealthily towards her home. She knew the elemental stewards would roll through the tunnel in only a few minutes, but she wasn’t going to rush into a potential ambush. She moved through the shadows, reached her door and strained her senses. She couldn’t find anyone outside in the tunnel, so she slipped cautiously out of the shadows.
The door had been difficult to open, and made far too much noise opening and closing. After two months in, she had taken some of the coin she had ‘acquired’ and purchased oil along with replacements for some of her broken lock picking tools. Those were not impossible to come by, but it was hard to get any tools of quality. Regardless of the price she could meet, most craftsmen didn’t want to have a lost seed caught using their tools.
As such, she had treated the hinges so they wouldn’t make nearly as much noise opening. She also used her new picks to lock and unlock the door. It meant that she learned how to open locks, but also how to work under pressure, as taking too long could risk her being drowned by merciless elementals.
This time, she could immediately tell the door had already been picked. Someone had gone inside. She leaned her ear to the door and could hear movement inside.
Someone was in her home. She hadn’t much property, but she wanted to keep what little she had. And someone was trying to take it. Indignant anger started building inside her. She rightfully stole those things, and now someone was trying to take them from her!
She needed time to deal with the intruder. She quietly unslung her pack and withdrew a small waterproofed pouch. She undid the clasp, held her breath, and threw it down the sewer tunnels where the elementals swept in from. The bag sailed through the air and impacted the wall wetly, falling to the walkway beside the water.
Black, viscous oily slime burst from the bag. It spurted out of the neck and out from the slime wriggled some kind of wormy substance that left putrid stains wherever they writhed. Spreading quickly, the creatures on the stone didn’t find anything to feed on and continued wandering around the sewer. The few that fell into the sewer water found plenty to eat, multiplying and spreading like a small swarm. As it did, some of the wriggling black things found their way to the other side of the sewer and started climbing up the walls.
The Nimh’ot maggots were difficult to acquire, but they were useful for assassins and thieves alike. They were hard to kill without fire, stank so badly they foiled most scent trackers, and as an added benefit, their secretions were nearly impossible to remove. The Nimh’ot fly was hardly any better of a creature, being half foot long insects that preferred to implant their eggs into live hosts.
The elementals should take some time to clean the outbreak out of the sewers, and it would mean that the tunnels in the area would be flooded while it happened.
Devinia drew her dagger and eased the door open a crack. Light poured into the tunnel around her. Nothing else happened. Low to the ground, she peeked into the room. An elf male poked among the crates using a crystal for light, apparently having not noticed her. She slipped into the room and pulled the door quietly closed. Crouched, she approached the man. He had his back to her, and it was easy for her to slip right up behind him.
Which was when his partner struck. She raised her free hand to grab him by the shoulder and put the knife to his throat when another male came out from her right, shouldering into her hard and flinging her to the floor. Her dagger spun out of her hand, clattering to a stop by the door.
She hit the ground hard, her right arm hurting but not broken. She backed away from the new attacker as the bait turned to her with a smile. Lukas and Markus looked at her with predatory satisfaction. It was Markus who had smacked her into the ground. Lukas set the crystal on the highest crate in the room.
“Finally!” Markus replied. “You evaded us for months. We’ve been looking for you.”
Devinia scowled. “You weren’t interested in working together. I had no need to meet you anymore.”
“We disagree.” Lukas said. “Especially after you showed us what you’re able to do.”
“You’re good.” Markus replied. “Bit young, but you sure have been making a rep for yourself these last few months. Did you know that some people think you’re a myth?”
Devinia started to get her feet under her, but Markus took a menacing step forward and she froze. “You don’t say?” she replied. The pain in her arm was fading.
“Yes.” Lukas replied. “The little girl who slips into and out of the shadows like a phantom, taking what she wants whenever she wants.”
“Sounds like an effective person.” She replied. The roar of water rushing into the sewer outside became evident. If left alone, it would be done in a minute or two. After what she had done, it might not be done for several minutes. Now she had trapped herself in with two grown males who wanted revenge on her for robbing them.
“Indeed. We learned quite a few new skills trying to catch you.” Markus replied. “I have to say thanks for that. We never even considered there was more out there than just the little world we knew.”
“We have an advantage over you, you know.” Lukas stated. “I have support. Backup. You’ve got nothing but you and surprise on your side. Now you’re fucked.”
“Just be glad we’re not into little girls, or that would be a literal depiction.” Markus replied, lining up a kick.
Devinia tried to roll away from the attack, but had very little room to maneuver. The blow grazed her, and she tried to jump to her feet while he recovered. Lukas punched her in the side of the head and she fell into the corner of the room. Stunned, she was unable to shadowmeld or fight them off as they pummeled her for several minutes. One of them got in a lucky kick, and she blacked out.
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 o
n 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.
Spellscribed Tales: First Refrain Page 13