//------------------------------// // Ch. 5 Capture // Story: Under A Wild Star // by SwordTune //------------------------------// By morning, the hunters who wanted to take a look in the cave had gathered outside the camp. They were gone well before the sun peeked over the mountain, leaving before the Highland clans swarmed the camp again for answers. August joined, of course, but there was no sign of Cerran or Beran. The only other face Nisus recognized was Thossa, who seemed eager to leave. “Couldn’t stand my parents worrying over my leg,” she said when Nisus asked about it. She cocked her head back to the other hunters with them. “Plus, I can’t let them take the credit after everything we risked.” There were three more hunters, two Skaith sisters and an old jack from the Gaduron clan. Nisus expected to see Skaiths, they practically lived to challenge her clan. She found it funny, a clan that hunted under the cover of night expect to have the same reputation as the Ghending. It was the Gaduron, Tregor, who surprised her. They were a clan of gatherers and farmers at the very bottom of the Lowlands, where the soil was fertile and easier to build farms on. The green mane that had grown down to his neck made him look in his forties, which made him the oldest hunter out of the group. Despite that, she questioned if he had enough experience to even come close to the other hunters. “Move quietly once we start climbing up,” August said when they finally neared the cliff. “There’s no guarantee that the dragon’s gone, or that new creatures haven’t made it their new home.” The sun was still low, rays cutting through the spring fog and sparking off the cold morning dew. It was an odd beauty among the scorched trees and barren soil. Only a strip of land by the cliff had any life to it. Distanced from the dragon’s flames, the zoak trees still rustled with their dark blue leaves and prickly green bushes still clung to the dirt. Amorwen and Fahanin, the twins, both paused at the mouth of the cave. Hearing about the dragon was one thing, but seeing the trail of charcoal and wood ash gave them a different perspective. Looking down, it was like a scar across the mountain’s blue forests. “How can one creature do all that?” the Tregor watched with them, taking deep breaths to keep himself calm. “It’s a dragon, straight from our legends,” Fahanin said. “Not a normal creature we can hunt,” her sister finished. “Voices low,” Nisus cut them off, drawing their focus to the back of the cave. This time, she didn’t waste a spell on making fire. Using a piece of pyrite, a common metal found near quartz and obsidian veins throughout the mountain, she scraped the floor of the cave to create sparks for her tinder. August produce a water-skin filled with oils, dousing a fistful of twine with it and wrapping it around a branch. He handed it over and she filled the cave with the flickering orange light. “Naeht yege,” The sisters both whispered. The marks on their waists glowed, appearing like constellations against their night-blue scales.  “Not necessary,” one of the Skaiths smirked at the torch. Nisus looked at them and saw her torch’s light reflected in their eyes like a mountain cat’s. Night eyes, a spell used only by the Skaiths. She wanted to scold them for wasting a spell, but she knew it’d fall on deaf ears. Her left ear started to tingle as if responding to that irony. Besides, she couldn’t fault them completely. Their spell gave them much better sight in the dark than a torch. “Stay close to the front, then,” she told them. “If you see anything we can’t, say so.” The stones near the back of the cave looked untouched since the dragon. They climbed slowly, cautious of anything that might lurk in the dark. Even with their spell, the Skaiths looked on edge. Boulders and piles of stones offered plenty of corners to hide behind. They crossed the stones. Nisus’s hooves slowed to a crawl. She remembered where the eye had been, where the dragon laid in wait and sprung its strike against her. The light from her torch illuminated the narrowing cave, but it did little to alleviate her nerves. “Something’s on the ground there,” one of the Skaiths said. Nisus turned, struggling to find their silhouette in the darkness. Both sisters had dark blue scales and shaved black manes that blended with the cave walls. “Fahanin,” the Amorwen said to her sister, “bring them over.” Nisus felt a claw on her back gently push her over to the left end of the cave where the Skaith was. August and Tregor followed behind her.  “What is that?” asked the Gaduron, as Nisus cast her torch’s light over the materials scattered around the ground. The light reflected off small metal tools. Some were knives, but far too small to make anything other than shallow cuts. Other tools looked meant for holding and controlling. One of the sisters, Fahanin, picked up something that looked like two small metal claws. “It pinches,” she said, poking her sister with it. The other Skaith slapped her sister’s claw away. “Quit it. We don’t know what any of this can do.” August walked past Nisus and picked up a roll of cloth from the ground. The fabric was thin, but as he unravelled it, the material clung to itself like magic. “What kind of spell is that?” Nisus asked. “Not a spell,” August shook his head, taking a closer look. “The cloth’s so fine that the fibres naturally cling to each other. It’s probably easy to wrap up wounds with this kind of material.” “Never heard of something like that,” Tregor frowned, “and I thought the Wefans knew how to weave anything.  August nodded, wrapping up all the tools with a piece of fur and storing it in his kit. Then, they continued searching, turning over rocks and checking behind stalagmites. It didn’t take long. The creature that attacked them didn’t seem to have had enough time to hide its equipment. Under a pile of stones, there was a box of some sort. August and Tregor worked together, pulling the stones away to expose the contraption. “Ever seen anything like it?” he asked August. The Foreteller shook his head. “No, but it’s metal and has moving parts.” He fiddled with the knobs on the front of the box. “Perhaps the Ironhearths or Crankcasters can figure out what it does.” Nisus took a look for herself. She wasn’t sure, it didn’t look like a spring-powered trap, and it definitely wasn’t a tool. The metal looked too flat. Ironhearths hammered their iron the way Lowlanders flaked stone. The process shaped the metal, but left behind marks as well. This metal box was smooth and flat on every edge. “Amorwen,” Fahanin called out to her sister, “bring the Foreteller over here.” August turned his head and made a disgruntled face, even though he couldn’t see the Skaith. “The Foreteller can hear you just fine. What is it?” “We found scrawlings,” Amorwen said, dragging August out of the torch’s light. Nisus watched her step, keeping close to her cousin. Fahanin shook her head. “Well, we found ‘something.’ They’re symbols of some kind, but I’ve never seen them before..” Amorwen shrugged. “Dragon scrawlings.”  Nisus bumped past the sisters and gave her cousin room to take a look at what they found. It was a block bound in leather that flipped open on one side. Even the material the symbols were scrawled on was completely unheard of before. “Feel it,” August said, giving it to Nisus. She put her claw on it, turning the thin pieces. They were smooth, but she could still feel the plant fibres on it. It was like inking scrawlings onto strips of tree bark, accept the material was so thin and light that the leather binding held hundreds of separate pieces. “You taught me how to read,” Nisus said, handing it back to her cousin. “If any of us are going to make sense of it, it’s you.” August inspected it, making sure to keep the fragile sheets away from the fire. If it was made from plant fibres, he didn’t need to guess what would happen if a spark caught it. After a moment, he should his head. “Can’t make sense of any of it right away. We’ll have to head back to camp. The other Foretellers and I can take our time reading it in the light.” Nisus looked at the torch, which was beginning to dim as the oil and twine withered away. “You’re right, let’s go for now. We have some clues, at least enough to keep the clans busy until we can think of a next step.” She picked up the other contraption, the strange metal box August was playing with, and put it in her hunting kit. All together a successful find. They didn’t know what any of what they found meant, but Nisus thought of it as a good sign. They already didn’t know anything about the dragon. More questions could only lead to more answers. “Really, that’s it?” One of the twins said. Nisus was having a harder and harder time telling the twins apart, she had already forgotten who had which mark. “That’s a good thing,” Tregor frowned. “You saw the burns outside. I’m glad the dragon wasn’t waiting here for us.” “We’re not asking for a dragon,” the twin with the fang marks on the sides of her waist. Amorwen, Nisus struggled to remember.  Her sister Fahanin had white suns on the same spot. “We just thought there’d be something cooler here. Dragon scales, maybe. Or a giant spear that a dragon could use.” They double-checked on their way out for anything they missed, but the cave seemed empty now that they had gone through it. Despite the success, Nisus kept alert. There was a chance the dragon or bird-horse creature would return as they were leaving, and she didn’t think either would be happy to see their possessions getting stolen. As soon as they climbed over the pile of stones, and the sunlight finally reached their eyes again, both the Skaith twins winced and clutched their eyes. “Are you two alright?” August said, putting his claw on one of them, the twin with the fang marks. “Are you here to be our gallant hunter?” Amorwen smirked at August and pushed him aside. “We just need some time. Naeht yege stops working when it sees sunlight, but it takes a minute. Until then, everything’s too bright.” “Just asking,” he muttered, climbing down the stone pile. Nisus traded a look with him, raising a brow. She was free to dislike Skaiths, she was just a hunter. But Foretellers had to do negotiations and trades. It was his job to get along with them. August stuck his tongue out at his cousin’s taunting. Her childishness was one of the few things that could lower his veil of maturity. Even Tregor smiled. The group’s attention snapped back to the Skaith twins when one of them shouted. “I saw something move!” The twins slid down the stones quickly, still covering their eyes from the sunlight, but eager to put distance between them and the thing they had witnessed. “Where?” August rushed over to them, the snake markings around his eyes immediately beginning to glow, preparing to cast a spell. “Behind some boulders.” Fahanin pulled her spear from her kit and aimed it to the left side of the pile of stones. “I saw the glint of an eye behind them.” Nisus and Tregor ran up behind them, looking with the remaining torchlight. Nothing reflected back, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. With their oversensitive eyes, Nisus had to admit that they were probably better equipped to see smaller details. “Is it still there?” Nisus asked. Fahanin shook her head. “Still has to be back there. The shadows behind the rocks, they’re not right.” “Close enough for me.” Nisus nocked an arrow and pulled back the bowstring, whispering a spell as she aimed along with Fahanin’s spear. “Gandthuru.” She whispered, and her arrow loosed, propelled by a ray of blue light. The arrow punched into the largest boulder Nisus could see, cracking the stone as it popped out the other side and produced a scream. Everyone staggered back at the sound. Nisus especially, she didn’t expect to hit anything in the dark. She simply wanted to flush out the creature, see what it was. But something was definitely back there, and now they knew they hurt it. There was a scrambling that sounded like bumping hooves, not dissimilar to a deer-hawk trying to fight its way out of a net. August turned to Nisus and pulled the torch from her claw. “Hathiertan,” he said into the stick, igniting the whole wood in a bright blaze. August stepped forward, shifting his weight and tossing the fire toward the sound of the struggling. More sounds emerged, and soon the body they belonged to clamoured out of the stones, patting the fire on its mane out.  Nisus’s eyelids blew up for a moment, and she almost rushed to help the creature. From a certain angle, it almost looked like a chimaera. Its back was scaled, its mane long and wrapped thick around its horned head, and it definitely had hooves. Four of them. -------------------------->>>><<<<-------------------------- “What kind of creature is that?” Tregor’s wings shot up in surprise, and suddenly he was clutching a flint hatchet. From the front, it was clearly another bizarre creature. It had scales on its back, but most of its body was coated in short fur. On its head was a horn, though it looked much more like a deer’s antlers than the pointed kind that Kerns or Frostcorns had. Nisus watched the Skaiths back up from the shock, but her cousin stood and stared. Both curiosity and fear were in his eyes, and it seemed he wasn’t sure which to side with. She reached above her head and pulled him back by the shoulder. “Easy, everyone,” Nisus warned them, “I know a scared animal when I see one.” As much as they stared at it, it stared back at them. The creature limped from side to side, bleeding from one shoulder but still trying to find a way out. But the five of them surrounded the creature, pinning it to the pile of rocks, which was too elevated to climb with an arrow in the leg. Nisus took one step closer, the creature took one step back. “We need this one alive,” she said, casting a wary eye at the twins. “It has to be connected to the other creatures somehow.” “Hooves, scales, and a horn,” Amorwen snarked, “are you sure it’s not a Kern?” She let the Skaith have her joke. The creature in front of them was thinking, she could see it in the way the eyes moved from one chimaera to the other. It wasn’t just looking for a way out, it was following their conversation and observing them. Nisus sharpened her focus and swapped her bow for a spear. The wide flint blade was a daunting piece of work, perfectly made to leave wide gashes in muscle and fat. The creature bellowed a pitiful sound from its mouth, a series of noises somewhere between grunting and bleating. “What on Eldyrea is that sound?” Fahanin lowered her spear. “Sounds like it’s already dead.” “Whatever it is, I’ll try to take out a leg. Shouldn’t be hard to capture it after that.” Nisus raised her spear, taking aim. The creature burst into a panic, turning to clamour up the pile of rocks while screaming its head off.  “You should aim for the throat for all that noise it’s making!” Amorwen covered her ears.  “We need it alive,” Nisus reminded her, throwing the spear. The flint spearhead barely hit, slicing by and cracking against stone. It left only a shallow cut on the creature’s flailing limbs. She snarled, reaching for her bow instead. Nisus was ready to nock her arrow when August stood by her and pushed her arms down. She looked at her cousin, confused by his expression. She’d never seen him glare the way he did before, as if something had possessed him. “Say that again,” he said. Nisus cocked her head. “Alive?” “No, not you.” He pushed Nisus back a step and began slowly walking toward the creature, who was still struggling to lift itself over a boulder. When it saw him approach, it redoubled its efforts, managing to hop up about one reach higher. As soon as August began speaking, Nisus recognized the Highland dialect. His accent was off, but he spoke slowly and clearly, which helped her hear the few words she did understand. Out of all the words he tried, “friend” was the clearest thing he said. Whatever else he spoke, Nisus wasn’t sure she understood, but the creature did. Enough of it at least to freeze and turn to look at August. Its bleating sounds were barely intelligible. “Frejund?” “Yeah, that’s right,” he chuckled at the creature. “You understand that, right?” August looked at his cousin with a big dumb grin. “There’s a pattern to the words. It’s not a Highlander dialect, but I think they might understand us. Don’t attack it yet, I can-” he paused and looked over Nisus’s shoulder.  Nisus felt it too, her experience from years of hunting, warning her that something was not right. She whipped around, powering back the string of her bow. A shadow cast itself into the cave, catching the hunters off guard. Their ambusher, throwing wide feathered wings into the air with a threatening screech, reared onto its hind legs and towered over every chimaera. Nisus loosed one arrow, then another. But the bird-horse clearly expected it, dodging long before the arrows whizzed past its head.  “Don’t let the other one escape!” Nisus barked at Tregor. As soon as her attention was back on the bird-horse, the Skaiths had already jumped into action. They charged at it, spears levelled with the ground. No sooner did they step into its reach than the creature swiped its talons. Amorwen ducked to the ground, but her sister caught the end of the strike on her shoulder. There was no time to juggle two tasks at once. Nisus trusted Tregor and August to handle the other creature.  Nisus looked at her mark, the tip of the arrow marks along her arm only barely dimming at the tip. Six spells to go. “Come on!” she taunted it, whooping and screaming to get its attention off the twins. When it ignored her, she drew an arrow and engulfed it in fire. “Hathierthan!” The arrow shot against something metal on the creature’s wing and bounced off, but not before the fire caught the ends of a few feathers. Nisus ran closer, taking a better aim. She estimated where its heart would be and fired another arrow. This time, she hit hard. The creature recoiled, in pain but not injured. With its attention, Nisus started to reach for her second spear. But she didn’t expect to find August flying through the air and crashing on top of her. “Argh!” her cousin grunted, rolling to his side. “Magic-” he coughed, “it has magic.” Nisus turned to see Tregor, howling like a wolf-lion against a wall of clear blue light. The horned creature repelled the jack with a bright wall of light. The magic he cast magic on himself that hardened his scales into wood-like armour was useless. Nisus didn’t hesitate to loose an arrow at the creature’s horn. Her aim was perfect, knocking aside its concentration. Tregor immediately fell forward, rushing the creature and wrapping his arms around it. “Help him,” she pulled up August before rushing back to the bird-horse. Fahanin lay on the ground, clutching her ribs. Her sister clung onto the neck of the beast, wrapping her legs around it. Without Beran, Nisus realized just how much bigger the bird-horse was compared to chimaeras. It reared its head and kicked around, throwing Amorwen off. Its singed feathers still smoked as it flapped, but the flames from her spell weren’t enough to catch on. Nisus drew her bow and shot two arrows at once, covering them in a single spell of fire. The bird-horse moved to intercept, deflecting the arrows with a metal contraption on its wing.  Nisus remembered the injured creature from before. That gave her an idea. She ran forward, firing arrow after arrow, each deflected against the creature’s metal wing. Once she closed the distance, she produced her other spear.. “Gandthuru!” she yelled, propelling her weapon into the metal. . The spell formed a piercing point around her spear, cracking through a piece of the metal frame. The creature squawked, reaching a talon out for Nisus’s leg. She stepped back, but its speed was surprising and it pulled her balance from under her.  A burst of pain shot through her arm when she hit the ground. The bird-horse had her in its beak, carrying her up the way a wolf-hare carried its young in its teeth. Nisus landed a flurry of blows against its beak, even raking it with her claws, but the bite just came down harder. “Hathiertan!” she screamed as the creature threatened to break her arm. With nothing to cling to, the fire wrapped around her claw. She battered its face, tossing sparks of fire all over its feathers. But it managed to ignore the burn, rushing forward toward August. “Hold it!” Nisus heard her cousin shouting. She looked down and saw a bundle of twine in his claw, trying to tie a loop around the other creature’s hooves. Tregor shouted to warn August, but he was too slow. The bird-horse swatted August aside, picking up the creature and throwing it on its back. “Nisus!” August shouted, seeing his cousin in trouble. He picked the spear she threw earlier and raised it over his head. “Drop her now!” But the bird-horse was fast, its talon flashing out and grabbing the spear. August yanked on it, using all his weight, but the thin Foreteller could not wrestle the weapon back. But he had magic. “Thurnin!”  August’s scales turned into painful barbs. The bird-horse recoiled, dripping blood from its talon. Nisus flopped around in its beak, the bird-horse whipping its head around to find it was being surrounded by chimaeras. The fight would be over soon if it stayed. Though her vision was blurring from the pain in her arm, Nisus could still see the bird-horse’s eyes. They bounced around its socket, shifting glances from one hunter to another. Amorwen and Fahanin were hurt, but their spears were still sharp. The fight would be over soon, unless the bird-horse ran. And, as they had already guessed, these creatures were not simple-minded. With Nisus clutched in its beak, the creature bolted out the cave. “No!” August yelled, launching the spear. “Gandthuru!” The spear shot forward with magic, punching a gash through the creature’s leg. Its steps stuttered, but by the time it felt the pain, it was already at the mouth of the cave. The upper body of a bird and the powerful rear legs of a horse, with great, wide wings on its back, the creature did not let itself be stopped. Its right wing sparked, the metal contraption that Nisus had damaged wheezed and whirled, struggling to open the wing. August stared, half hopeful and half terrified, as the beast leapt off the mouth of the cave and began gliding over the sea of blue zoak leaves.