Ashyn hit the ground in a roll, his training overruling his natural instincts to just ball up. The staff, however, went soaring once more into the darkness. As the wizard’s chaotic tumble came to a stop, he looked up.
The world tilted and swayed, but he could see clearly in front of him. The bull.
Ashyn staggered to his feet. He landed in a deep pocket of mud, kicking up water and sludge. On either side of him were the massive bases of the sequoia trees. Any impact from those would’ve been fatal at the speed at which he flew.
His eyes darted back to the massive frame of the creature and then to the sodden earth before him. The staff was nowhere in sight. His eyes fell back to the gargantuan before him. At least it didn’t have it.
Its eyes bore hard into Ashyn. He could see its body quiver as it struggled to breath. Long dregs of mud clung across the creature’s normally slick coated body. They appeared like islands across the sea of fur.
Still the dirty mounds did little to hide the bulging muscles of the thing before him. Over two-thousand pounds of sheer mass lay between Ashyn and the cavern, and all the wizard had was his skinning knife. An odd sense of déjà vu filled him.
The bull snorted and charged.
Ashyn waited for just the right moment. Its body surged forward. A wall of sinew and muscle. Its body glistened in the rain, casting a sparkle on the slick coat of fur not covered in mud. It lowered its head down, and Ashyn saw the long, curved dark horns coming in line with his chest. Like the elk before it, it planned to gore him.
The ground trembled as it closed the distance, and Ashyn could actually see the puddles of water around him rippling with each heavy hoof fall.
When it was ten feet away and coming fast, Ashyn moved. He dove into a roll around one of the sequoias coming up just on the other side.
The bull reacted as well and turned the opposite way, narrowly skimming the thick rugged bark with its wide shoulder. It killed its momentum, tilted its massive head back and roared in frustration.
Ashyn made a run for the cave. The entrance looked too small for the thing fit through. Behind him, it bellowed again, and the ground quaked beneath his feet. Ashyn didn’t look back. He just kept running.
When he was feet away from the entrance, he felt intense heat rolling off the bull as it loomed up behind him. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. His eyes darted left and right. He was in the rocky channel of the opening. There was nowhere to go but forward. He braced for its impact.
Suddenly, he heard a snort of shock, followed quickly by a whistle of panic. And Ashyn was there! He made it into the opening. The boy looked back to see what saved him, and he saw, with disbelief, Ginger on the creature’s snout, clawing viciously at its eyes.
Deep red lines crisscrossed the bull’s snout and it swatted and grabbed at its face as if it was trying to dissuade a mosquito or a gnat. However, this was no insect. A nimble cat was ripping long creases into the bovine’s flesh.
“Ginger!” Ashyn yelled, and without thinking why, he darted back out of the cave to save his feline companion.
The bull bucked wildly and slammed its fists repeatedly against its head in an effort to dislodge the feline. Ashyn saw Ginger score a wicked hit as its claws lashed across one of the bull’s eyes.
The wail it produced cut through the billowing storm like a strange high-pitched whistle. It was an odd sound, and Ashyn recognized it not one of pain, but of fear. It was afraid of the cat.
Ashyn moved forward to help Ginger, when something glinted from the corner of his eyes. He turned and saw it. A long shaft sparkled under the dim light, as hundreds of diamond-like raindrops ran down polished mahogany. It was the staff. It was wedged into the gnarled roots of one of the massive timber sentinels. He put his skinning knife away. He had only one chance.
Ashyn ran for it, narrowly ducking as the creature’s wild arms swung like a windmill. A corner of the creature’s finger or thumb caught the back of his hood and ripped it from his head. Instinct had him trying to grab it, but he was already past. He knew losing the hood was a small price to pay for not getting crushed by one of its anvil-sized fists.
Ashyn came forward and reached out. His fingers brushed the staff, and the same spark of power coursed through his fingertips and ran down his body. His hand closed around it and pulled it from its earthen prison. It slid as free as if it was sitting in the snow. He turned right as the bull-man flung the cat away from it.
Ginger sailed away into the darkness of the storm. Ashyn didn’t hear a sound. Not a crunch or a thud or a cry of pain. He wasn’t sure if the cat was okay or if it was dead. The sight of the cat dislodged so callously, its life disregarded so easily, made him angry.
This cat, this animal, came to his aid. Probably had saved his life. It showed more humanity in that moment then either he, or the creature before him had in the last few days.
He looked to the bull in front of him. As much as he desperately wanted otherwise, Ashyn knew that only one of them would walk away from this.
The bull’s good eye locked with his. He saw the anger, its need for vengeance. Ashyn once felt the same. He knew that need all too well. It still burned inside of him, but he had learned to temper it.
It slammed its hooves into the ground, pronouncing once more its alpha dominance. Ashyn brought the staff to bear. He didn’t know how to use it, how to make its power work, but he had an idea.
Lightning ripped across the sky above them. It jumped from cloud to cloud, never touching the ground. Thunder boomed and rumbled above them vibrating Ashyn’s teeth. He knew that soon they would enter the eye of the storm, where everything would be calm. Fitting he thought.
The bull roared.
Ashyn screamed.
Once more the bull charged at Ashyn, but this time instead of standing his ground, Ashyn ran at it. He ran with everything he had. He drove himself with all the energy he had left to muster.
The bull stampeded forward, foam frothed from its mouth, its one whole eye thirsty for Ashyn’s blood. Ferns rent, rocks ruptured under its immense weight, and scattered branches exploded into shrapnel and debris.
Ashyn did not slow. He did not waiver. Either this was going to work, or he was going to die. But it ended here. This hunter would not pursue him any longer.
Twenty feet.
Ashyn noticed the water pelting hard against the bull’s flank, its slick body glimmered in the faint light.
Fifteen feet.
He could see the scratches along its face, bright pink against its dark fur. They had not healed as quickly as everything else had in the past. It was as if the cat had somehow found a way to make that damage stick.
Ten feet.
He could feel it. Feel its heat, its intent. It was committed now, and so was Ashyn. The gap was too close, his motions fluid. There would be no way he could roll away in time, and he didn’t want to.
Five feet.
Ashyn brought the staff around in front of him. The bull was so close to impact, that if it tried to punch him it could hit him without a problem. Its head lowered, and all Ashyn could see were the sharp tips of its horns, ready to gore him to death.
Two feet.
Ashyn reacted. As when he slipped, Ashyn drove the staff into the mud. The earth drank it down hungrily. And it became an anchor. It became a barrier.
He saw the bull’s good eye expand in surprise, and in that moment he knew he had chosen wisely.
The crack of the bull’s skull against the staff was deafening, louder than when it had hit the sequoia. It reverberated across the forest. The wind from the momentum of the two-thousand-pound bull washed over him in a sudden gust of heat. The staff held, as solid as any tree.
Ashyn watched as the bull’s head split. Blood exploded along the surface like crimson geysers as it gave way to the muscles and sinew beneath. A bright line formed behind the wells of blood that was brilliant white against the darkness of blood-drenched fur. The creature’s skull.
The bull collapsed onto its side. Panting faintly. Ashyn pulled the staff from the sodden ground, and hovered it above the bull’s broad chest. It looked up at him weakly. It looked like it didn’t have any fight left.
Ashyn struggled through the rain that ran down his face to see the beast. He knew what he had to do. This is the only way.
Thoughts of Julietta’s torture at the hands of the Council of Elm galvanized him into doing what needed doing. He heaved the staff higher into the air and then brought it down as hard as he could. Suddenly the bull used the rest of its flagging strength and lunged at the boy. Ashyn felt pain like nothing he had even known.
He looked down confused at the bull to see its mouth moving strangely, as if contorted in pain, and then he looked at the staff. Embedded deeply in the creature’s chest. He had landed the blow, and it was fatal, he knew it to be true. The bull’s unique regenerative ability would not be recovering from this.
But why did he hurt so much, too? With glazed eyes Ashyn noticed the bull’s arm extended towards him. He followed it all the way to his own abdomen where its large hand enclosed around something small. Slowly it fell away, and Ashyn could only stare down in shock.
Jutting from his stomach was a cherry wood handle. The cherry wood handle, Ashyn’s foggy brain realized, of his own skinning knife.
~ ~ ~
Pan knew it was over. That the red one had felled him. He was content. His strike would kill the red one as well, perhaps not immediately, but it would kill him nonetheless.
As he lay there, panting, slowly letting the pain ebb away, he realized that the strange thing before him that looked like a human was not a human at all. It used the totem. It could use Pundit’s totem!
It was a strange revelation as the final moments of his life bled out of him. He would have to discuss it with the Great Earth Spirit, he decided. He thought only gaur could use totems. He was told only those in touch with their bestial side could truly understand the power of the totem, but clearly this was not the case. Had he been wrong about the red one? Had he made some mistake? Did this one know of the beast within him?
Slowly, weakly, the pan reached up and wrapped his fingers around the totem. To feel the familiarity of his mentor’s totem once more in his hands. In that moment he felt it. He felt the presence of the red one within the totem, and he knew without a doubt that his nose was correct. This was no human. And this was no elf.
There was a magic inside of it. A well of pure spirit energy that seemed almost endless, and it shifted and rolled within the red one like a caged beast.
What was he? With rising alarm at the red one’s power, he realized with equal doses dread and jubilation, that the red one was siphoning the unlife essence from him. The scourge that kept renewing his body, and denying him rebirth, was drained away.
Once again he felt his spirit. He had come all this way as a creature of unlife, expecting his destruction. Instead his spirit was given back to him right before his release from this world. The red one gave it to him. A Totem-Brother.
~ ~ ~
Ashyn stared at the wall of red that was growing around the knife in his stomach. No, no, no! Of all the times in the past few months he thought he was going to die, he didn’t think it was going to be like this! Stabbed with his own skinning knife!
He had to do something. He had to stop it. Somehow he had to stop it!
Ashyn watched in disbelief as the circle of blood turned into a sheet as it ran down his abdomen. There was so much! Too much!
His eyes burned with anger as he looked down at the bull who stared back at him. Then he saw one of the pink lacerations on its face begin to close. Without thought, without understanding how, he knew he needed that power.
He watched as the bull reached up to touch the totem. In that moment, at that tactile sensation, Ashyn felt it. An alien presence in the staff. It reached out to read him, and he let it. He felt its source. He felt the magic within, and through the magic, he felt the creature’s power to knit its own flesh. Ashyn needed that power. Not just to save his life, but so he could save Jenhiro’s, to save Julietta’s. He reached out for it as he reached out for fire.
It coursed through him, cold, yet refreshing, like he just submerged himself in a mountain lake. He didn’t know how to control it; he didn’t know how long he would have it. But he had it, and it was already ebbing.
His hand slid down the mahogany until it brushed up against the bull’s thick fingertips. Their eyes met once more, its malice replaced with awe. Ashyn pulled hard on the weapon and it slid from the bull’s chest as easily as it had slid from the ground.
To both of their surprise a large gout of blood followed. The bull mewled as it stared at its own life’s essence pouring from its body.
Ashyn reached down and touched the rent hole. He didn’t want to waste the power, yet he couldn’t leave it this way. Even after all it had done. Their eyes met, and at last both of them finally understood one and other. In that moment, a moment that was to be their deaths, they had peace.
The hole in its chest began to mend. The bull didn’t fight him; it only stared as Ashyn expended all he safely could into the beast. And then, Ashyn watched as the puckering hole closed, and the bull’s now healed eyes rolled into the back of its head. It fell into convulsions.
He whispered, “Feedback.” It had been so long since he touched magic this way, he completely forgot. He didn’t have much time.
Ashyn moved swiftly, the knife in his belly momentarily forgotten as the determination of his need set in. He made it to the cave, stumbled inside as the first wave of feedback hit him.
He stumbled, suddenly dizzy, yet held on to the staff. He felt the power ebbing away swiftly, like sand pouring through his fingertips. As quickly as he had it, he was going to lose it again. He swayed, trying to get his footing and took another step forward. His legs gave out. No! He crawled as waves of nausea pounded over him.
He saw the elf’s still form. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. He drug the staff limply at his side, he could feel the pour of the magic bleeding out of the staff now. He knew he should use the last of this power to save himself, but that wouldn’t get him to Feydras’ Anula, only Jenhiro could do that.
The elf was only ten feet away when his arms gave out. Blackness surrounded the corners of his vision. The wizard knew he couldn’t reach him. The power he had stolen was so fleeting he doubted it would be enough.
Ashyn slid the staff in front of him and pushed with all his might. He felt the knife in his side grate against the stone, pulling his own wound wider. He growled. The staff was only inches away from Jenhiro’s body.
He could faintly see the rise and fall of the elf’s chest. He was going to fail.
Then suddenly he was pushed. He didn’t know by what, and he didn’t know how, but he moved forward those valuable inches and the egg-shaped stone touched the elf.
Ashyn poured the power of the staff into Jenhiro. The effect was immediate. The Wild Elf arced his back and groaned in agony as the bones re-set themselves in his leg and arm. Ashyn watched through a fading light as the healing magic pushed out all the gauze he had squeezed into the pierced hole in the elf’s chest creating an eruption of blood and wool. The hole closed. With his remaining strength, he rolled to his side. The tips of his fingers brushed the cherry wood handle of his knife. He willed the healing power into it.
He felt the beginning tingle of his mending flesh. Deep inside he felt his organs mend, and then there was nothing. The moment had passed, and the magic was once again gone.
Damn.
Ashyn’s eyes grew heavy, and he knew that fate was no longer in his hands. Perhaps it was better this way. He let oblivion take him. He didn’t even try to fight it.
~ ~ ~
Jenhiro struggled to open his eyes. Pain wracked his body and he felt unbelievably cold. His lip quivered and he shivered uncontrollably. Why was it so cold? It was spring wasn’t it?
His mouth felt dry, and he could taste the heavy bitterness of copper on his tongue. His body was soaked in water, and yet he felt so thirsty.
Finally, with much struggle, the elf wearily opened his eyes. All he saw was blackness. Am I blind? Am I dead?
As if in answer, a surge of lightning blazed forth, briefly illuminating his surroundings. He was in a cave. Water trickled around him, and he could hear breathing.
His eyes adapted to the dim light. His chest covered in a mountain of used bandages, all of it sticky with crimson cruor.
His mind reeled at the memory of the bull impaling him. He desperately reached out to his chest where he expected to feel a garish wound. Instead, he felt sensitive, soft flesh. He prodded more, searching for the rend that he knew should be in his body, but there was nothing. It was gone.
Jenhiro sat up and his hand grasped something round and hard. Confused he latched onto it and drug it forward. He heard the clatter of wood on stone echo through the cave, and he realized he was holding the skewer’s weapon. The very same one that the black magic wielding bull had used to kill his people. Revolted, he threw it to the ground, and that was when he saw the hand. The hand of the Wood Elf. Or Wood Elf no longer.
Jenhiro pulled himself to his feet, and limped towards the fallen body. His legs trembled; one ached like he had broken it. Still he had to know. Know if it was true.
As he hovered above the fallen boy, and he was correct. It was not a Wood Elf. He was deceived, “A dui Nuchada.”
His eyes moved from the deceiver to the staff and back again. His own fingers brushed against his reknit flesh.
It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t conceive it. No!
Jenhiro stumbled out of the cave. No. The dui Nuchada were evil. They were skewers of the worst kind. Abominations filled with the spirits of monsters or worse. It is what he was told. What he believed.
He reached the mouth of the cave and climbed out. He groaned as his sore body fought against him, but he needed to be away from the skewer in the cave.
Jenhiro climbed over the last rise of rock, and his eyes fell to the still form before him. He blinked away the falling rain, wiped his face, and looked again.
Twenty feet away was the bull that had hunted them. Defeated and broken, its chest rose and fell ever so minutely in the dim light.
Jenhiro bit his lower lip and spun to look back into the cave. The boy was the dui Nuchada. He was the enemy. A skewer of balance. By all rights, he deserved to die. He was an abomination. An affront against nature.
Jenhiro found himself turning and looking back to the mound of flesh and muscle defeated a scant distance away. This bull had harassed his thoughts and dreams for the better part of a month. The guilt he felt in his chest at surviving the loss of his party burned in him like white hot fire.
The dui Nuchada held up his end of the bargain. Jenhiro sighed. He helped Jenhiro protect the people from the beast. Once more he rubbed at the newly formed flesh and bone. He saved my life.
Jenhiro left the sight of the bull. He made his way back to the dui Nuchada. There he saw the makeshift splint out of the dui Nuchada’s armor. He saw the time and attention that this skewer gave him in an attempt to keep him alive.
Jenhiro looked down and noticed for the first time, the garish wound in the boy’s abdomen. Blood ran from the slit in his body. It leaked out slowly from between the steel embedded within him and his own flesh. Like the wound had begun to heal, but couldn’t finish. Without proper treatment, he would be dead in a matter of days.
Jenhiro could seal the wound, but he had no way to fix the damage within the body, or to get rid of the poisonous blood that would well up inside along with other potential lethal fluids. The elf had no real way to save him, only prolong the inevitable. The dui Nuchada would die if he didn’t receive proper aid.
Jenhiro was torn. All his life he hated and despised the dui Nuchada. Now, he had allied with one for days upon days, and it just saved Jenhiro’s life at the expense of its own.
The dui Nuchada also delivered the weapon of the skewer and the skewer itself that plagued him. The dui Nuchada helped him. He helped Jenhiro’s people.
This wasn’t the mark of someone evil. Yet the Council of Elm taught… He willed the thought away. Did they not have such a discussion? Did the dui Nuchada try to tell him what he was the night before?
That decided it for him. Jenhiro reached down and pulled the knife from the boy’s stomach. He groaned. Blood pumped out from the open tear in the boy’s guts. In minutes it would be over, and the dui Nuchada would be dead.
The Wild Elf gathered all the materials around him, squatted down and treated the wound. He could stop the bleeding on the outside, but that alone would not be enough.
“I cannot save your life,” he told the dui Nuchada honestly, “but I know those who can.”
Jenhiro stood, “Spirits have mercy on me for what I am about to do.” He told his fallen comrade, “For I doubt my people will understand.”
The elf stared at the cave mouth once more. Yellow eyes flashed at him in the darkness. The dui Nuchada traveled with the wildcat. It looked between him and the fallen dui Nuchada. Jenhiro watched it watching him, and then it turned back out into the wilderness and was gone.
For the best, perhaps. Jenhiro figured the large feline probably thought his companion dead. He wouldn’t try to find the cat; he already had enough of a burden trying to keep the dui Nuchada alive.
Jenhiro knew very keenly where he was. He came here before many times. He also knew the closest place to find help, and likely what they would do with the dui Nuchada once they helped him. Jenhiro saw little choice in the matter though. He had to try. Jenhiro was going to the druids.