Behind me I could hear the screeches of keelish agony over the coughing explosions of fire, steam, and stone. The cries of agony dwindled in number as a woman’s enraged and agonized scream rang out over the rushing waters. Looking back, I could see the press of keelish bodies forcing the humans to stay on their back feet, preventing them from continuing their attack on the few survivors that followed me onward to the far banks. For the first time I cursed my unwillingness to spend eighteen days without being able to see in the dark, because I wanted–no, NEEDED– to see Rulac’s last stand.

The screaming woman’s voice was cut to a gurgling stop, and I could hear Rulac’s victorious, wordless cry of victory and bloodlust also be cut short. Then, only deafening silence echoed behind us.

The waters had ceased to pull on the remaining hundred or so members of the swarm when Rulac’s counterattack had begun, and I waited for the inevitable, exhausting currents to work against us once more. All around me the vestiges of the swarm began to flag in their exertions, some going nearly quadrupedal in their exhausted frenzy to escape the implacable death that followed. I could continue at this pace, but I would lose those who surrounded me. I could finally pick out the faces of all three of my children, and a small part of me sighed in relief.

Immediately afterwards, I picked up on the sound of the humans continuing to chase after us. Looking, they weren’t catching up to us as quickly as before (the death of their Waterspeaker had taken their primary aquatic advantage), but their catching us was an eventuality, not a possibility. I shouldn’t have begun to feel relief…

The chasing party was gaining, slowly, but wouldn’t catch us until we had made landfall. My mind began racing, thinking of the possibility of ambush from within the cover of the trees. Rulac would have focused on the Flamespeakers and the Waterspeaker, and the Waterspeaker was obviously out of commission, so their best tracker was out of the equation. Additionally, no fireballs had come searing for our backs, so it was highly likely the two Flamespeakers wouldn’t be a part of the continued hunt, so the greatest threats to us had been neutralized. Maybe, we could pull it off!

Behind us, the splashing of the pursuing humans got closer, from the initial half mile down to a quarter, 100m, 50m.

At a distance of 30m from our pursuers, I made landfall and began screaming orders. “Scatter in packs! Prepare to ambush, focus on those not covered in stone!”

The stragglers from the swarm began to scatter when an eerie feeling suddenly coursed down my spine and gestured instead for them all to gather around me as I continued forward, jogging. The panicking part of my brain screamed for me to continue sprinting, to flee, begin setting up any possibility for ambush, to escape the dogged pursuit of these damnable High Speakers from Nievtala knows where. Still, that persistent feeling troubled me, and, against some of my better judgment, I spoke out in the common tongue as I continued to jog into the forest before us.

“Hail, defenders of the forest. We wish you no harm, only a safe passage and escape from our assailants. We will take silence as an agreement to do us no harm.”

A diplomat I wasn’t, even in the best of times, and much less so when I had what may as well have been the manifestation of my death following me. Silence greeted my words, and I led the swarm to rush forward in our flight. Sybil looked at me strangely alongside multiple other members of the swarm, but they followed my lead.

We had lost much of our distance from the pursing humans, who hesitated only briefly before stepping on the rocky beach and began their Callings.

A ringing voice from ahead of us shattered any all of my doubts about whether this side of the river was inhabited. Something subconscious had alerted me to it, and it may well have saved our lives.

“Stay where you are, warlocks. You do know that if you profane the soil of the Wilds it will be repaid in kind, right?”

The voice was at once authoritative and derisive. This voice, whoever and whatever it was, absolutely hated the people from the other side of the river.

Behind us, the humans came to an immediate stop, looking around for the source of the voice. Foire nudged my shoulder and pointed wordlessly to the base of a massive burlraiz near to the riverbank. There, without my thermal vision to focus, only a faint, dark blur of a human figure appeared as the humans responded.

“Of course we aren’t here to trespass upon the face of the Wilds, but simply seek to avenge the slaughter of our own upon those beasts before you. We ask for your permission.”

“It seems to me,” the hidden stranger’s voice cracked like a whip, “that the ‘beasts’ before me are not beasts at all but thinking creatures. Is that so?”

After a brief pause the voice repeated itself, “Is that so?”

I shook myself, realizing what they were asking for, “We think and communicate, yes.”

“Additionally, you seem to have avenged yourselves plenty. The blood of the saharliard has sated the thirst of the Nard’ul, and you have not seemed to pay a blood price in kind. You are not welcome in the Wilds. Return from whence you came, warlock.” The voice’s smug derision swelled as I gave them reason to spit in the faces of our pursuers.

A new voice rang out from the humans, “They murdered my wife in that river! I will slaughter every last one of them and allow her soul to rest well in Vataal Sam! You cannot interfere with this!” This was a woman, one of the Flamespeakers. Both hands had been cleanly bitten off almost up to the elbow, and she was in no state to effectuate any noteworthy Calling.

“So, Night-profaner, do I hear that you wish to incur a blood-debt?” The voice’s tone became grim, heavy, and indescribably… reverent. The speaker finally stepped forward out of the cover of the shadows cast by the surrounding forest. She was a woman, her eyes much too large for her head by human standards, the sclera nearly invisible around the huge sky-blue irises that dominated all but the very corners of her eyes. I knew there was much more to take in of this possible ally, but her eyes drew mine in in an irresistible, nearly painful fashion.

The human woman’s voice stumbled to a halt as the original speaker reprimanded her. The woman from the forest spoke up again as I slowly became aware of the presence of dozens more of her people melding out of the forest and into the light of the riverbanks.

“Profaners of night, warlocks, killers of innocents and prisoners, I ask you again in my authority as Bloodpriestess–Do you wish to incur a blood-debt?”