by Heath Pfaff
I heard a loud yelp from behind me, and suddenly Arthos was taking down one of the four that were coming for me. He moved like a streak, never hesitating, his weapon a blur as Will surged around him in tiny but controlled sparks. Rocks zipped around his head, darting like arrows and pelting the creatures that were threatening us. He was also using Will on his weapon to land blows harder, something I couldn’t hope to do yet.
I found a large stone on the ground and slammed my Will into it as hard as I could, pushing it in the direction of the nearest creatures. I missed entirely, but the rock whistled as it blurred between two of the willifen and smashed against a tree, blasting a hole most of the way through the trunk before it crumbled to dust. This didn't hurt the creatures, but it did distract them, and I swept in and dealt terrible blows with my staff.
The first creature I hit tumbled to the ground as its head caved in, but the second had seen the blow coming and spun with the impact not taking the brunt of it. He rounded on me and charged, launching his powerful, agile body in my direction. Claws on massive hands raked the air in my direction, shockingly fast. I managed to get back out of the arch of the slash, but I was off balance. I tumbled my next step backwards, trying to turn it into a roll, but I knew I was in trouble. I felt a surge of Will and by the time I got back to my feet, I turned to see the willifen that had been just a step away stagger and slump to the ground, a narrow branch protruding from the center of its chest. I looked on in a kind of bewildered horror as Arthos came and stood next to me.
“You’ve still got much to learn. Your performance was slow and your use of Will was laughable. You’d be dead if I wasn’t here.” Arthos offered his critique of my fighting.
I nodded numbly. He was right, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that I was still shocked by all that had happened, and how quickly it had happened. It was the first time I’d ever really seen a Warden, a full Warden, in actual combat. I hadn’t understood just how vast the gulf between my skill and his was.
“Did you take any hits?” Arthos asked.
I shook my head. “No, no scratches or bites.” I answered, feeling disheartened. I’d failed to come to a peaceful solution with the willifen, and I’d learned just how weak I really was, and all of it in a few seconds. Zark would've been disappointed if he’d seen me. He would have done better. I would have done better with him. A powerful wave of sadness swept through me for a moment.
“It’s alright, Lillin. You’re new to all of this, and it happened very quickly. You’ll get better with time and effort. You look like I just told you that you’re going back to day one of your training.” Arthos smiled easily enough. “We’re alive, and neither of us were even hurt. Once we’re done here I’ll help you with your focus on your Will again. We just have to find you some control with your raw power. You can get there.”
I tried to smile back and gave a nod. “I guess I expected to be better by now.” I wanted to tell him how much I missed my friend as well, but I knew the unspoken taboo there. I wasn’t supposed to linger on things from my past. It wasn’t that it was forbidden. There was no real rule against it, but no one talked about the past. It was part of the inherent cruelty of becoming a warden. We got where we were by treading over those we deemed weaker than ourselves.
“Come along, we should follow these tracks the rest of the way. Be ready for trouble, though.” Arthos didn’t put his weapon away as he located the tracks we’d been following and resumed our tracking. The path was still clear and easy to follow.
We cut through the woods, moving steadily away from the swamp again, this time in a different direction then we’d originally traveled. A few minutes later the smell of fire and roasting meat came to my nose, as well as the sounds of a child crying. A chill ran down my back as a thousand terrible images flashed through my mind, and the scent of the roasting meat took on a cloying, terrible stench that I was almost certain was only a product of my imagination.
I wanted to talk to Arthos, ask him what he thought was ahead, but he was still moving forward, his steps quiet and careful. A moment later we stopped at the edge of a small clearing, still concealed in the underbrush, and we managed our first look at where the willifen were living. It was a camp. There was nothing else to call it. There was a fire, and around it were a group of small structures that looked crafted from wood, leaves and long grass. They seemed at least semi permanent. I was relieved to see that the meat roasting over their fire looked like a large animal of some sort, horse maybe.
There were six full grown willifen in the clearing, moving about, attending to things around camp. A few of them were together watching after tiny willifen, babies. One even had a babe at her breast. Mixed in amongst the little willifen pups were human children, the oldest looking to be thirteen or so, a girl with a tear streaked face who was softly crying. There were a couple of boys about eight or nine years, and a younger little girl, but they were all playing together with the willifen children who looked close to the same age, though I was guessing based purely on size.
The game looked rudimentary, some kind of dexterity exercise involving clapping hands and drawing lines on the ground with a stick. I wasn’t sure what sort of play it was, but they were all trying to play. I looked at Arthos, and he looked back at me. I could see the confusion in his expression. This wasn’t what he’d thought to find either. I was happy not to be the only one to be taken by surprise.
I looked between the willifen again. They were all women. They had breasts and seemed less bulky of frame then the males, though it was hard to tell much else about their gender from their appearance.
We adjusted positions slightly and one of the women stopped, lifting her nose to the air. She took in several deep breaths and then her eyes snapped around in our direction, the red orbs piercing into our cover.
She gave a barking growl, some piece of language, and all the women immediately snapped to attention and fell back around the children as the willifen woman pointed directly at us. How she’d made us out with her eyes I couldn’t know, but the others were all looking as well now.
Arthos sighed and stood up from his cover, taking a step forward. He didn't put away his staff. I followed after him quickly. The willifen growled as we came into view, all of them with their backs to the children, circled around them protectively. They thought we were here to take them, or harm them. This was their home, and we were the hostile party here. Again, this was not a situation I could have anticipated.
“You’re going to have to give us the human children and leave these lands. Go back to the mountains.” Arthos said, speaking slowly and clearly.
One of the willifen females, one with streaks of gray in her fur stepped forward and snapped her jaws sharply in our direction. “You go!” She snarled, voice surprisingly clear. “This our home now. Our pack.” She gestured at the children. “Males come soon, kill you if you here.”
“The males are dead.” Arthos replied with a calm certainty, but no bravado. “We killed them to get here. They fought well.”
At his words one of the females hunched down, her ears falling. She leaned her head back and howled loudly and shrilly, and the other females seemed suddenly hesitant.
“No truth!” The lead female growled. “No truth!”
Arthos lifted his weapon, blood still on the ends and held it so that the breeze passed over it, drifting in the direction of the women. Their noses, far more sensitive than ours, reached for the scent as it came to them, and then they all seemed to settle down, hunching back, though staying protectively around the children.
“Dead.” The lead female said. “You killed alpha. Now you kill we?” She looked back at the other females and the children.
“No, you just need to leave here, go back to the mountains. We will take the human children back to their own kind.” Arthos spoke again. He sounded a bit uncertain.
“We don't want anymore death.” I said, hoping a female voice might soothe them some.
“Mountain
is death. You send us death.” The lead female said. “This pack.” She gestured to the other females and the children again. “You send pack to death.”
“Your kind have always lived in the mountains. You can live there again.” Arthos said. “Please, hand over the children.”
A whimper came from the female who had howled when told the males were dead. She’d fallen out of formation now and was among the children, nuzzling them with her nose, wrapping her powerful arms about them and holding them. She treated the human children just like the others, and they clung to her just like the small willifen. It was so strange, and it also made my chest ache for them. What was this situation we’d stumbled upon? How had this come to be?
“My kind live with Friend. Friend have . . . sick. Sick make death. We stay with home, but then alpha come from mountains and say we move here. This home now. Mountains, he say, death. Our kind, death.” She frowned, a toothy, somewhat frightening expression. “Hard to words.”
A slightly smaller female had moved next to her. She had some similar markings in her fur, but most of her hide was dark black, which made her startling yellow eyes look incredibly bright. My eyes caught on her for a moment before returning to the lead female.
“Friend?” I asked. “Who was your friend?” I was trying to piece this together in my mind. It sounded like she was saying that she had been living here with someone, and then that someone had died and more of her kind had come and taken over their pack. The new alpha had moved them here. That meant there might be somewhere they could go back to, but what about the mountains was death? What had driven this new alpha down from there to begin with? Maybe he’d been cast out. That seemed likely. Going back would probably be death for a cast out. “Can you show us the old home?” I gestured to the lead female. “Lead us to ‘Friend’s’ home?” I asked, and Arthos nodded to me, clearly liking the path I was taking with these thoughts. I didn’t think he really wanted to kill these females either. Doing so would be far too much like killing common people, and that was a clear abuse of power.
“Friend home?” She asked. “I can take . . . but you not hurt women? You not hurt pups?”
Arthos shook his head. “We don't want to hurt anyone. As long as they stay here and wait for us, we will all come back here and talk. No more blood.”
“No blood. No death.” The female answered. She turned to the other females and made some noises at them, and gestured to the ground here, and the food that was cooking on the fire. “Stay.” She added in our language. “Return soon.” The women nodded, relaxing a bit, and then started going about their work again, only giving us furtive looks from time to time, as the emotionally distraught female stayed with the children.
It felt strange to be walking away from that situation, leaving the human children with the female willifen, but what else could we do? We needed to understand what had happened here, and it seemed clear that these females, at least, were not hostile towards the children. Had they been a threat, we wouldn’t have found any of the young alive. We followed the female with gray on her, and she led us through the woods.
“Friend protect me, protect sister. Care for us. Love us. Friend teach words. Teach survive.” She explained as we went. She gave a soft whimper too. “Love Friend. Miss him.” We walked for another ten minutes as she told us of playing in the creek with her sister, and growing up with the man she knew as “friend.” It wasn’t all easy to understand, and there were parts of it that made it sound like her and “Friend” might have grown into more than just friends at some point, but she never got too close to that topic. Finally we came out of the woods and into a clearing with a cabin nestled in the center. The cabin was in a rough state, partially grown over, and in front of it was a pile of rocks that was clearly a grave or memorial. It had been built high, piled with care.
The female approached it slowly, laying a hand atop the rocks, clawed fingers sliding over the cold stone. It was impossible not to see the tenderness in the gesture. She sighed. “Friend rests. This home.” She gestured. “You look. You see. Read Friend book. I good. I take good care.”
Arthos and I exchanged a look, and then we began to explore the cozy clearing and it’s single home. I could hear the creek running behind the cabin, and I saw other sights, things that the female had mentioned in her stories. I went into the little cabin after a time and looked around. It was simple enough, divided into thirds. There was a cooking and eating place, and two rooms that looked like they’d been made after the cabin was built. In the larger room I found a book, a leather bound journal that was closed and sealed. I picked it up and opened it carefully, flipping to the first page. It was dated thirty years prior, the paper fragile with age. The handwriting was careful and neat.
It took me a little while to find the first entry about the willifen.
Firstfrost 16 5472
I’ve decided not to kill them. I don’t know how they got into the swamp alone, but they are helpless and sweet. I won’t just put them down. I have enough on my conscious already without adding this crime. Feeding them is difficult, and they seem lost and afraid, but they’re smart and willing to learn. Perhaps most important of all, they need me. It has been a long time since anyone needed me. I’m naming the younger one Dreea, after my sister. The older one I’m naming Tawny. I’ve always liked that name. I’m a fool for doing this at all.
I flipped further through the book, skipping several pages.
Stormsrun 25 5473
I read through my first few entries again. I was uncertain about my two girls for a while, but now I can’t think of what life would be like without them. They’re learning to talk. It’s a bit slow, and I don’t think they’ll understand the finer points of language, but it’s not because they’re not intelligent. They just think differently than we do, and their mouths aren’t really made for our words. Dreea seems better with it than her sister. I am happy to have them in my life.
He didn’t keep records every day, or even every week, but there were pages and pages of his records all through their lives. I stopped and read a few. I wasn’t entirely certain what to make of his eventual decision to take the older one, Tawny, as a lover. That seemed . . . well, I had no idea what to make of it, but it was what it was. It wasn’t my place to pass judgement on a situation that I had no perspective upon. From what I could piece together by reading the entries, Friend had eventually injured his leg while out cutting wood. The injury became infected, and though they tried to treat it, the infection spread. He knew he was dying, and in his last entry he knew the time was close. Tawny and Dreea had lived with him here for just under thirty years.
Arthos approached after a while, shrugging. “This place looks pretty ordinary.” I handed him the journal.
“He found the two females when they were little, alone near the swamp. He took them in and taught them how to speak. He died a few years back, infection.” I summed up what I’d read, skipping over the more unusual aspects, though the whole thing was unusual really.
“What about the others? You said it was just two girls?” He asked, flipping absently through the pages of the journal, not really seeming to read any of them.
“I’m guessing they came after he was dead and talked the girls, Tawny and Dreea, into leaving this place. Tawny is the older sister, the one who led us here. They probably didn’t know what to do without ‘Friend’ and were surprised to see others like them so they went along with the others just looking for company. From what I gather the males did most of the raiding. The females were more intent on keeping home, raising their young, and the young brought back to them.” I felt bad for them. They were just trying to live, and somehow that had ended with them in this position, unable to get out of it.
“You know what we should do, right?” Arthos asked, and his words seemed to bring a terrible chill to the air.
“You can’t be serious.” My eyes snapped to his. “They are women and children.”
“They are dangerous creatures, ones
that will continue to be a threat to the humans that need to move through this area. We can talk them into moving back here, but how long will it be before they need more supplies and take another caravan? It is our responsibility to make sure the people of Evelsmoth have nothing to fear along their roads. It’s not an easy task, Lillin, but it is a necessary one.” I was appalled and disappointed in Arthos. I’d thought he was showing some semblance of kindness when he’d agreed to come here, but I realized that he’d likely just been making sure there were no more of them. This wasn’t about find an alternate place for the willifen at all.
“Wardens are so quick to jump to violence.” The words snapped from my tongue like a curse. “I’m not willing to let this turn into a slaughter. These aren’t rabid wolves, Arthos. They can talk and think.”
“Sometimes the enemy can talk and speak, but that doesn’t mean you can stay your hand. What would you have us do?” Arthos sounded like a patient teacher lecturing a dense student, and I found the condescending tone more than just aggravating.