1-7 R

I hit the ground hard, rocks beneath the ash digging deep into my arms even while the backpack cushioned me. The paws, bigger than my head, held me down even as the claws curled up without catching my flesh. On either side of me hissing droplets poked holes into the ashen crust of the forest floor as they dripped from its jaws.

Something in my shoulder crunched under the massive thing’s weight, but the pain was oddly distant. Everything was, like I was watching from a distance. It was almost like I could see the back of my own head and the tangled mess this chase had left my hair. Something around me rustled even as I watched teeth longer than my fingers line up with my head, a familiar warmth and emptiness settling around me like a cloak and drowning out everything with its ache. Why should I bother worrying in the face of a pain like that?

The darkness swept over me before the thing’s teeth could snap shut.

Light came back what felt like moments later, with me still on the ground. But the…thing was gone. No burning acidic slobber, no pitted teeth and smoking jaws ready to close over my head. Just the dark sky and distant trees, with Fae staring down at me. The presence around me slowly faded with the beat of distant wings.

My heart was pounding as it all sank in. I’d been so sure I was about to die and I hadn’t even panicked. If I focused I could still feel a part of the thing I’d touched just a few days ago, a kernel of its existence nestled deep in my chest, just watching.

The Fae jolted me from my thoughts with laughter.

“Pitiful showing.”

“It broke itself in two days!”

“The tool doesn’t even know what it’s for!”

The speaker bounced around, the hill echoing with more mockery.

“We can’t break our little toy yet, friends. Perhaps it needs a simpler challenge than a cairnhound.”

“It is the runt of its litter.”

“Perhaps a magivore?”

“Are ye’ daft? The poor thing would starve.”

“What of a lazzerak?”

“There’s no fun in watching it coo over their guise, for all the art that comes after.”

“A cerboar, then?”

“Fitting! A beast that feasts on dirt and stone for the golem made of flesh!”

They kept chattering but it faded into the background. None of them were looking at me as they bickered and I realized that, despite the existential panic, I felt…better.

Not good, still, but better. Everything ached, but nothing throbbed or shook. I was still hungry and thirsty, but it wasn’t that gnawing pain from not eating or drinking for days. My clothes had tears, but there weren’t any bleeding scratches or gouges in them, just faint scars that barely stood out from my skin. They had to have healed me, but I couldn’t see why. They were the ones that made me run from that thing in the first place, why would they undo it?

The spear that landed between my legs left me scrabbling backwards, this time. Not as much as before; even when they drove me back toward the thing they’d called a cairnhound they’d never hit me. I wasn’t sure they could, even with how Tammy had sold me out…

“Time to run, Seedling. Let’s see if the Grower’s work bred true.” The grin on their face was anything but gentle even as they softly pulled me to my feet. “Now, try not to disappoint us. Again.”

Two of the interchangeable Fae crested the ridge just ahead of me, silver chains looped along their wrists and pulling what looked like a living rock on too many legs with them. The longer I looked at it, the more it thrashed. Neither of the slim figures even budged, despite the chains themselves beginning to distort.

The way the things mouth opened to scream was enough to get me running even through the aches and pains. Nothing that opened by flaps was worth getting close to.

~-~-~-~

The Fae were more visible as I ran, this time. Less active, though, so long as I kept myself occupied. Running, mostly, but they didn’t do anything to bring the beast back to me if I stopped to rest for a few minutes. Trying to get enough ash cleared to get water that didn’t leave me choking was fine too, but trying to blow it off with magic left me lightheaded. Planning…

Planning wasn’t fine. The Fae didn’t do anything, but the boar-like thing they’d loosed seemed to know when I was looking at it. It got antsy, then started to scream after a few seconds. If I didn’t either look or move away without making noise after that it would turn and charge at me. And it moved fast.

It was stupid, though. More interested in rooting around in the ash to pull dirt and rocks into that petaled maw. If I was quiet and had my eyes closed, I could walk right by it. Of course, the Fae didn’t like that much and always brought it running back to me if I got too far away. Other than keeping us in close proximity, they seemed content to watch for now.

Running obviously wasn’t what the Faeries in charge were looking for. It didn’t feel right to me either. I couldn’t run forever, not without food. I’d just get caught and have to stare up at my own death again. That awful apathy wasn’t something I wanted to deal with again. And if I disappointed the Fae that owned me for now too much…

Best not to think on what would happen if they didn’t think I was entertaining.

So I had to fight, even if I couldn’t think of how. I had the knife from the ritual, for all the good it would do. A bunch of reference books that I couldn’t sit down long enough to read. Pitiful and untrained magic that left me dizzy. How was I supposed to do something with that, when I couldn’t even look at the thing I had to kill long enough to tell what it actually was?

The knife wouldn’t work. This thing’s skin looked like rock, chalky white under the streaks of ash. Shining veins of something ran across it, linking a set of divots that wrapped around it. There were no eyes or soft-looking places to stab except for the mouth, and there was no way I’d put my hand anywhere near those shining crystal tusks. They were clear, mostly, and maybe half as long as my forearm. Looking like gemstones would hopefully make them fragile, but the way I’d seen it use them to tear through both rocks and the mostly intact trees made me think they weren’t. Even if they had been the mouth they surrounded would have been more than enough to scare me; the inside of each flap was lined with hook-like metallic teeth set into sickeningly blue flesh.

One of the Fae came into view as I crept around a tree while the boar started to dig again. This was as good a time as any to start, but I needed to be ready to run if it heard and came at me.

“Will you bother me if I stop to do something useful?”

“We aren’t the bothersome ones, Seedling.” It sneered.

Just as pointless as I expected, honestly. And their answer was pitched loud enough that the sound of digging stopped and I heard four sets of legs behind me. I was already running again, thinking over the rest of my plan, as the tree behind me splintered.

~-~-~-~

Keeping track of time was next to impossible here. I’d worked until my eyes refused to stay open and I could barely stand up. The hunger was a gnawing pain that never went away. Drinking more of that dark water whenever I found it made me nauseous, but it kept me from getting as horribly dehydrated as last time. So far, at least, it hadn’t given me any other issues.

My leg, though, that was a big issue. I’d made a bit too much noise and been too slow to get up a tree in time and one of the thing’s tusks had gouged a finger-length chunk out of my calf. It didn’t want to hold my weight without a support now and I couldn’t run any more. If I got caught again, it would be a repeat of last time. The throbbing from the wound had faded into the background aches and pains and it had stopped bleeding much, but the bloody paste of ash that had clogged it was concerning in and of itself. Especially since I hadn’t put it there and it hadn’t touched the ground.

I couldn’t stop to worry about that, though. I had to focus on the plan. But now that I was looking at the pile of half-burnt branches, I wasn’t feeling that good about my chances. Starting a fire here felt deeply, deeply wrong and left the thing inside me retreating even further into the distance. It might not even work since everything here that wasn’t already charcoal was still charred.

Finding the wood had been the hardest part so far. The pile in front of me were the rejects, the pieces that looked solid but had broken when I tested them. To my side were the eight I’d found that had held up. Each longer than I was tall and thicker around than my thumb. One lucky find was as thick as my forearm but most were a lot thinner and springier. I wasn’t sure which quality was better, actually. The longest was almost twice as tall as me, but most were only a few inches higher. They each had ragged ends where they’d first broken off, but I wanted to get those into points. Most of them had to be able to stick into the ground and have a sharp side poking out.

I wasn’t sure if the boar would notice the fire. Or if it needed to sleep; I knew I did and was terrified I’d wake up to it sinking its tusks into me again or pulling my arm into that rock-grinding mouth.

Getting the sticks sharp was why I needed the fire. I remembered something from old books and shows that fire-hardening made a wooden spear better. Or was it faster? Either way it would help. I had to make eight sticks into stakes. They might not go through its skin, which I was pretty sure was actual rock with how dust cracked off of it when I saw it run into a tree, but it was the best idea I had.

The thing didn’t have eyes or a nose. Not even a tail. Just the oblong, rocky body, the eight legs that cracked and snapped in ways that looked unnatural as it ran, the dimpled spots of its skin, and the mouth. The last two were the ones to aim at. I knew the mouth was the closest thing to flesh, but maybe those sunken spots were weak too. I hoped that I could bait it into running itself up onto one of the stakes, but if I managed to trip or trap it with the rest I might be able to stab it with one.

I really hoped the first plan worked. I had doubts on if I could stab anything with my noodle arms.

After a few minutes of flinching back in sync with the panicked wingbeats inside my head, I managed to get the fire going. It caught, surprisingly well in fact, and just left me lightheaded as I shook the strands of liquid fire off of my fingertips. After a couple minutes of staring at the fire whatever was making the wingbeats calmed down and I could think again.

I grabbed the first of the sticks and thought about how this actually worked, weighing the short knife in my other hand. I think I’m supposed to rotate it through the fire and carve off the char to make a point…

“You are one of the most dangerous things to the Fair Folk, did you know that?”

The shaft fell into the fire, rolling off and dragging embers that slowly winked out in little pockets of ash. Across from me was one of the Fae, but not one that had been hunting me. The Lady that had muted me.

“The Flower was a failure. Even the Grower admitted such. Yet its death broke him worse than the loss of his Names.” The fire seemed to fade as every tree around me creaked in time with her sigh. “Yet here you are. Stars have been born and died in the time since what you represent last roamed the worlds. And you were sold by your counterpart to the Children because you are both imbeciles.”

Her hand squeezed down on a handful of ash. Something in the air popped, everything wavering like I was staring through a heat haze for a few seconds. When her hand opened a handful of gems fell to the ground, dark stones shaped into wicked points.

“You cannot die. Not here, not yet, not by our hand. But I won’t stop this. The link has to grow.”

A wind that touched nothing but the trees and the fire blew through, carrying her words with it. “You will feel what they felt. Fight as they fought, struggle as they struggled. Beg as they begged, break as they broke. Burn as they burned and bleed as they bled. And in the end, maybe I will see them again.”

Everything went dark. Again. But this time it was with a soft embrace of wings and memories that weren’t painful.

~-~-~-~

I don’t know how long it was dark, but this time it was actual sleep. Complete with dreams that I couldn’t remember but that I was sure were unbelievably vast. The aches and pains in my body had just melted away and all that was left of the cut on my leg was a line of grey scar tissue.

The fire had burnt down to ash. More of the substance sloughed off me as I stood up. That was normal though; anything that sat here too long was buried by it. Except, apparently, for the staves of wood. Seven of them were just sharpened woods, the tips charred but not burnt. The thickest one, though, had the gems from the Lady set into it. A grey gem that seemed to glow as the tip, with two blackened and two brown gems making a cross a few inches below it. The wood itself had withered but it somehow felt harder than steel. Just like the ones that kept getting thrown at me.

It took a few minutes to gather everything up and by then I could hear the boar moving closer. This wasn’t a good spot for my plan, though. Too open. I needed to funnel it into the stakes. That meant finding a hill or valley or thicket. Whichever I found first, probably. I didn’t want to keep running and dodging it even if I felt better now than the start of the run.

The stakes rattled against my back, slotted through the loops of my backpack so that I could carry them all. The more elaborate one was in my hand since it was a way better weapon than my knife. In the time it took to find a sheltered little ravine I caught a couple glimpses of the boar. Never enough to let it get enraged and charge me, but enough to know what direction it was in and when I needed to be quiet.

The ravine wasn’t a proper one, to be honest. Maybe a four foot drop at its deepest, but it was a channel at least a hundred feet long. Whatever it was carved from and whatever made it were smothered by the ash to the point I couldn’t figure it out, but it was enough for me. A run like that with a sheer wall at the back and lined with enough trees to make jumping down inconvenient was perfect.

The ground gave easily as I jammed the extra stakes in. Three angled across the ten-foot-wide passage around torso height for the boar. Four set as firmly as I could in a chevron that would stab in around its mouth, hopefully, as it charged at me. The one the Fae had left me was planted against the ground, but not wedged in. I needed to be able to actually aim at the mouth. Once everything was set up, I did something immensely satisfying.

I screamed.

Not like when I was surprised or terrified, no. It was me venting what I felt about Tammy screwing up this badly. About the Faeries thinking they could use me as a toy. About pain and loss and emptiness greater than I could even imagine, as the fluttering thing inside me seemed to whisper along with me in concepts too broad to be considered words. Just that was apparently enough to make the world shake.

The ash around me cracked in fractal patterns as it tried and failed to harden. The walls on either side of me writhed while my voice went out, the trees rooted into them twisting and curling to make an archway over the top of the ravine. From their underside glowing bulbs and tendrils tried to grow, withering into ashes as quickly as they formed. When I ran out of breath, the whispers lagged behind by a heartbeat.

Once the world stopped shaking and the glows had all faded, the trees above were twisted and drooping. It didn’t look like they were going to collapse onto me, thankfully. Most importantly, both the boar and the Fae were standing at the entrance. The boar itself was screaming like it usually did when I looked at it, but in the silence following mine it felt small. One of the Fae let go of the chain they’d materialized and it charged.

The first stake broke on one of its tusks, splintering and leaving nothing more than a scratch in the ash on its side.

The next one was just a hair too low, tangling into the beast’s legs as it ran and snapping without leaving a mark. It did, however, cause it to stumble into the third. Hard. The point broke off with a crunch but pried off a piece of rocky skin at the edge of one of the depressions. The rest of the shaft sank in as it forced itself further forward.

It stalled, for a second. The main body of the stake refused to break at this angle, but the boar’s skin didn’t. Squirts of blue stained the ash as it yanked forward, a shower of stone falling form its side as a line of its skin was pried off. It was limping, now, but still insistent on running up at me as I watched.

I didn’t have time to think as it smashed into the braced spear in my hands. The gnarled shaft vibrated as hot blood sprayed out onto my hands, the things mass driving it further and further down the shaft even as the other staves drove into its sides or broke against its hide. The tusks inched closer and closer to my fingers as its thrashing threatened to rip the spear from my grasp. The cross of gems went into its mouth, shearing through the metallic spurs of its ‘teeth’ with a grinding rasp and left it barely a foot from ripping through my wrists. Its screams, now, were more like whimpers of pain.

I closed my eyes and twisted until everything went still.