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.
There were no dreams, no nightmares that night. Instead, she awoke some time later to instant clarity, aware of two things. One, there was a hunk of bloody carcass within arm’s reach of her, and two, the Dancer in Darkness reclined on the other side of the body.
Devinia’s breath caught in her throat, and she instinctively melded into the shadow. The hunter glanced at her, chuffed and resumed tearing a hunk of meat off the bone and swallowing it down. Of course it could see her; it had before and had been in the room with her while she slept.
Devinia swallowed and came out of the shadows. It glanced at her again, and leaned forward to nudge the chunk of meat towards her.
It appeared to be the haunch of an elk, the dark fur spotted with still-glowing spatters of color. It was too much for her to eat, and it was raw. She looked at the meat, then at her company.
“Is… this for me?” she asked. The beast just flicked an oversized ear and seemed to devote its singular attention to the rest of its supper. She wondered for a moment how it had gotten the body into the haven; the door was too small for the thing’s antlers to fit. Now that she looked, where was the thing's head?
She turned her attention to the chunk in front of her. There was no way she could eat it raw, but how would she cook it?
She looked back through her things and rediscovered the metal tube containing the fire crystal. Like the elemental magic that made lights of varying kinds, a fire crystal had more in common with enchanted coal than with the actual quartz it was made from. The command word would ignite the fire, and it would also douse it.
She could use the fire to cook, but she was up in a tree. Maybe that was what the metal plate was for, but the light it gave off could anger or even hurt the Dancer in Darkness she was in close quarters with. She looked around, trying to figure out if she could shield the light.
She dumped out the jar of nuts onto the mattress, and placed the fire crystal into the bottom. The plate fit loosely over the opening at the top and she examined the tube to find the command word to activate the magic. She spoke the word quietly, and was rewarded with the dull thump of the crystal igniting. It burned on elemental magic, but still needed air so she made sure the lid was loose. If the beast had noticed the dull light coming from the jar, she couldn’t tell. As the fire burned, the smell of nut oil burning made her sneeze several times until it was all burned out. Using her mother’s knife, she cut a slice off the hunk of meat and laid it on the metal plate. It sizzled, and she sliced off several more. When the meat
looked at least mostly cooked, she speared it with the knife and ate it off the blade while another piece cooked. The elk was gamey and delicious, and she found that she had quickly eaten all of the meat.
She spoke the command word to douse the flame, and the crystal went out, sucking up all the residual heat in the process. The jar was cold, if a bit blackened on the inside. She stored the gem for later use and did her best to scrape the nuts back into the jar. Feeling full, she saw the Dancer in Darkness had shoved what remained of the elk against the far side of the little haven and reclined watching her with golden eyes glittering in the otherwise gray tones of darkness.
It closed its eyes and seemed to drift off to sleep. Devinia watched it in wonder, seeing the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of its chest as it rested. She could still partially see through its hide like before, but it wasn’t nearly as disturbing to her the second time. Eventually, she lay back onto the mattress and went back to sleep.
* * * *
Weeks passed, and Devinia found a strange companion in the Dancer in Darkness that had decided to tolerate her. At first when she was convalescing, it would climb up into the haven, dragging small prey for her to eat. She'd figured out that the creature was female, with apparently no male counterparts nearby.
Once she had recovered enough, she would try to stalk the beast as she hunted. The Dancer in Darkness always seemed to know where she was, but was playful in letting her sneak up close before turning to ‘notice’ her.
Wherever she went, Devinia always took the knife with her. She watched from high up in the branches as her companion hunted the creatures of the woods. She saw how the Dancer in Darkness played with her prey, finding and forming openings to exploit, killing only when the target was in the right position to do so and then ending the life of her prey with brutal efficiency. For the elk, she would cause them to startle. As they fled, she would take down the last straggler without the rest knowing until it was too late. There were wild boar that trundled through the woods that were large and aggressive enough to prove a tough fight, but the hunter would not fight. Devinia discovered that her spines could be flung like a dart with a flick of her tail, ladened with a poison that slowed the creature down and confused it. Against smaller, faster prey, the Dancer in Darkness simply was faster still.
Devinia learned a great deal from watching her hunt. She learned how creatures assessed for danger, and how the Dancer in Darkness avoided their senses. It employed distraction, misdirection, fear, and the nature of their prey to make the kill. In some ways, it made her think about her times playing hunters as a child. She remembered the times she'd been the prey, and was reminded of the way that the Dancer in Darkness would mislead and whittle down a passing elk herd. Maybe she had more in common with it than she had originally estimated.
Devinia picked up on all of these things, and eventually she took part in helping her partner in the hunt. Time passed, and she had spent so long in the forest that she had outgrown her clothes. Instead of wearing hides, she took the dark leather clothing that had been sized for her mother and pulled it on. She cinched it in where she could, but as the months passed, she found it fitting more and more properly.
Sometimes her mysterious companion would disappear for days, and then return as if nothing happened. When it happened the first time, Devinia had been concerned but had been unable to find her no matter how hard she looked.
By the third time the beast had done so, Devinia was prepared to follow her. Using every trick she'd learned watching it hunt, she took every precaution following it, sometimes waiting until it was almost too late to keep on her trail and trusting on instinct to guide her through places where she couldn’t keep track of the great beast.
She had saved some of the preserved foods for trips when she couldn’t return to the haven, and had also fashioned a short spear from the leg bones of an Eiloiche which she carried with her. She knew enough about her partner's sleeping habits to know when to rest, and when to move. Though more than half a mile away, she was able to follow the creature without apparently being detected.
Late on the afternoon of the second day, Devinia discovered what the hunter had been looking for. She was stalking in the shadows high up in the trees when she became aware that another creature was stalking her in turn.
Devinia shifted forward to another tree branch, pretending to not be aware of its presence. The awareness of being stalked nagged at her, and she was more certain now that a Dancer in Darkness was on her tail. Unlike the one whose presence she was used to, this one felt hostile. It took her moving across three more treetops to be certain, but the creature stalking her was using the same tricks she had witnessed her partner using when she was hunting prey.
Devinia’s mind raced. In the time she had known the creature, she had learned how to hunt like the Dancer in Darkness, not how to avoid being hunted by one… right? Wrong, she realized she knew how it hunted, and she knew the creature's thoughts more than almost any elf.
Taking a breath, she gripped the bone spear tighter. The weight of the dagger at the small of her back felt suddenly heavier. The situation was suddenly deadly in ways that she had not anticipated. It was one thing to hunt with one of the great beasts, but another to be hunted by one.
She remembered the way it stalked a single target, waiting for it to show vulnerability before striking. It preferred to use its teeth and claws to kill, and only resorted to its quills if the target proved too hard to take down. Devinia needed to appear weak enough for it to come at her personally; she had no way to survive the creature's poison.
She made a show of turning to look to her left, while lowering the spear held in her right hand. She moved forward, raising her spear again and then another fifty yards, she paused to repeat the action. She was still following her partner, but not as quietly as before and with none of the added caution. Backup would make survival much more likely.
Her nerves ringing with tension, she almost missed the sound of air being displaced as something sailed towards her while she repeated the action a fourth time. The creature had seen her lowered guard and took it as an opening. She whirled, raising the spear and gripping it with both hands as she thrust out at the oncoming attacker.
The Dancer in Darkness hurtling towards her was smaller than the one she had befriended, but that meant little when both beasts outweighed her by a great margin. It was in mid swing with one razor-edged claw as the spear tip punched through its phantasmal hide and bit deep into its breast. She held the spear tightly, so when its weight shoved it back; it also shoved her out of the range of the claws that would have nearly removed her head. Devinia fell back off the tree branch as she tried to let go of the spear, grunting as she clipped another branch before landing solidly on a third which cracked from her sudden weight upon it. The injured hunter fell past her with a howl that ululated deeply, resonating with the trees themselves until it suddenly stopped with a sickening crunch fifty feet below.
She carefully loosened her grip on the branch and looked over the side. The creature was not moving from what she could see; although the Dancer’s natural camouflage made it impossible to see clearly defined lines from that far away. The bone spear sticking out of the darkness was not moving, which led her to believe that it was safely dead.
She shimmied down the tree cautiously, expecting with every foot she closed on the creature for it to spring up and snap at her in some kind of ruse. The attack never came, so she stood at the foot of the tree in front of what she could clearly see was a corpse. She reached out, grasped the spear, and yanked it free. The fall had hammered the spear another foot into its body, so she had to push against it while pulling hard to yank it out.
Her partner materialized next to her, startling her. She dropped the blood slick spear as she turned, but the Dancer in Darkness seemed not offended at her deed. She looked at the corpse of her dead fellow, down at the spear, then up at her. Devinia thought for a moment the creature seemed glad before it turned and starte
d padding silently towards home.
Had she helped her partner protect her territory? Was that what she had done? She looked down at the dead creature before her. Normally, she never wasted what she killed, but even if her partner was approving of her killing one of her kind, Devinia did not assume she would be okay with her eating it too.
She thought about it, and crouched down to really examine the creature. It was male, both younger and smaller than her partner. Very likely she would have had no trouble dispatching the youth alone, but Devinia had managed to do it for her. The creature’s hide was both beautiful and hard to see, her eyes piercing through the darkness if she focused too hard on it. She reached out and touched it. It was coarser than her partner’s, but she could feel the warmth fading from it through her gloves. She wasn’t sure what would happen, but magic-infused hide couldn’t exist without life to support it.
She didn’t have much training in magic, other than the natural talents she had learned growing up. She pulled the gloves off her hands and touched the body. The hide was both soft and with prickly bits as the shadows forming it changed shape. She concentrated, feeling it out just like when she was learning her shadowcraft. She thought perhaps she could pull the hide off without having to resort to knives using shadowcraft. After all, it was just like breathing, wasn’t it?
She felt a strange slithering sensation across the palms of her hands, but kept concentrating. She felt a strange tiring sensation as the shadow of the beast slipped across the surface of her tanned skin, turning it temporarily black. She pushed her will harder, and the black seeped up her body, covering her skin from head to toe as she absorbed the darkness of the creature.
As she did so, she struggled to hold her breath. Something instinctual told her that should she breathe, she would disrupt the action and it would invariably be dangerous. She kept pulling, and her skin shivered. The darkness crept into her hair, turning it black at the roots and seeping down to the tips. For an instant, her entire body was black as the deepest night.
Spellscribed Tales: First Refrain Page 14