It took Yore far longer than he would have liked to lure the rock golem into the swamp, dodging hands that reached up from the mud as they went. He’d hoped to get it bogged down in the mud, but it just kept ploughing through it. At least there were no boulders for it to throw out here and the mud slowed it down enough that it had no chance of getting close enough to slam its rocky arms into Yore.
When he trusted the wrong ground and sunk belly deep into the mud himself, he decided he was done. The dead grabbed for him and tried to pull him under, but he managed to struggle and squirm his way back onto firmer ground. It looked like they’d distracted the rock golem as well. Yore took the opportunity to dash back the way he’d come.
He hated that he’d left Fanner alone for so long, but he had needed to get the rock golem clear of the path. It was too dangerous. Members of his own pack used this route regularly. It was likely that a group had been sent out looking for him and they would be coming back this way once they stopped in at The Inn and were told that he was fine and had already headed home.
Hopefully Cookie was with Fanner. She’d stayed with Yore long enough to ensure he had the situation under control, and then she’d dashed off. He didn’t know that she was capable of much in the way of fighting, if it came to that, but she was smart and she seemed particularly protective of Fanner.
He doubled back to where the fight had started, left the bag for now, and began to track Fanner. Cookie seemed to have come this way as well, but the path she took was meandering. However she had tracked him seemed to be quite different from Yore’s method.
Yore heard the distant sound of Fanner’s voice and ran in its direction. Fanner fell abruptly silent as Yore got close, but he could smell him now. Cookie chittered, loud and friendly, from the bottom of a dried up creek bed. Fanner poked his head up as Yore climbed down the bank.
“Yore!” Fanner exclaimed, throwing his arms around Yore’s furry body. “I thought you were dead.”
Yore waited until Fanner let go and then shifted back into his human form. “I’m sorry I left you alone for so long. I had to get the rock golem away from the path.”
Fanner hugged him again, and this time Yore had arms to hug him back with. Fanner was shaking, his breathing coming fast and uneven.
Yore rubbed his back. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine now. You’re safe and so am I.”
“I really thought you had died.”
“I’m sorry, Fanner. Really. I wanted to come and find you sooner, but I was worried someone would get hurt if I didn’t deal with it right away.”
Fanner pulled back and looked Yore over. “You’re hurt.”
“A little, and very muddy. Sorry. I had to go all the way out into the swamp to get it far enough away.”
Fanner started brushing his hands over Yore, not quite touching him as he dissipated the mix of blood and dried mud on Yore’s skin. He paused to pick a shard of rock out of a cut on Yore’s shoulder. He was still breathing unevenly and his eyes were red and damp.
“Hey, are you okay?” Yore asked.
Fanner gave a shaky nod of his head, but it wasn’t very convincing.
“I’m sorry I scared you.”
“You saved my life. You and Cookie.”
Yore offered him a gentle smile. “She was good, wasn’t she? Somehow she knew that thing was there and she was determined to protect you.”
“I saw it when it still just looked like a pile of rocks and—and I was going to go and sit on it and have a drink of water.”
“She stayed long enough for me to get the situation under control and then she ran off after you. I’m glad she found you.”
“Do you think they’ll let her stay at the settlement you’re taking me to? If she wants to, I mean.”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll talk to them about it for you.”
“Thank you. I wish I could go with you, but if I at least have Cookie maybe… maybe things will be okay.”
“Things will be fine. You’re starting to trust me and that’s good, but we’ve only known one another for a few days. We’ve gotten a bit closer a bit faster than we otherwise might have because of the circumstances, but if you can get to know me this quickly, I’m sure you’ll have lots of friends within a week.”
Fanner nodded as he lifted Yore’s arm and cleaned under his armpit. He still looked so distressed, so vulnerable. “What if I don’t? What if things really aren’t okay?”
“If things really aren’t okay you can come and visit me and I’ll help you figure them out. But only if you really need to, okay? I’m not saying that I don’t want to see you, but I have a lot of things going on in my life and there are a bunch of things I need to jump right into when I get back.”
Fanner nodded. “Thank you. I promise I won’t bother you just because I miss you.”
That made Yore’s heart clench. He wanted to reassure Fanner that he wouldn’t be bothering him, that he’d actually like to see him, he just couldn’t afford to take on the extra responsibility. He wasn’t sure that would help, though. Fanner was a person, a friend, not a responsibility, but he did need help and that would take a great deal of time, patience, and careful thought.
“I’ll come and visit you as soon as I can,” Yore promised. He smiled as Fanner circled around him, checking for any remaining mud. Yore would have settled for a quick rinse in the river, but Fanner had done thorough work. “Am I sufficiently de-mudded yet?”
Fanner made a sound of dismay in the back of his throat. “You’re covered in tiny cuts.”
“Don’t worry about it, Fanner. I’m a man who’s had tiny cuts all throughout my internal organs. I can handle having them on the surface of my skin.”
Fanner took a deep breath in and let it out as a sigh.
Yore did his best to turn his reflex to laugh into a kind smile. Fanner just sounded so serious. “It’s just some minor cuts. Like I said, I’ve had worse. Hell, you’ve had worse. Why is this upsetting you so much?”
Fanner shrugged. He wouldn’t look Yore in the eye. Of all the things that had happened to him on this journey — and a lot of shit had happened to him in just a few short days — this one seemed to have shaken him the most.
Yore looked around. “Hey, where’s Cookie? She’s surprisingly stealthy for… I don’t even know how to describe the shape that she is.”
Fanner let out a slightly broken but genuine laugh. “She went away and caught me a fish before. She probably hasn’t gone far. Or maybe she has. I don’t really know what goes on in her head or what motivates her, but it’s worked out in my favour so far.”
“Thanks for cleaning me up. Now, I’ll need to go and get the bag before we continue. I feel like it might distract from the moment a little if I’m naked when I bring you in.”
Fanner nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you want to come with me or stay here? I can get it quicker on my own, but I’ll understand if you’re not too keen on being left alone again.”
“Um... is it okay if I come with you?”
“I wouldn’t have made the offer if it wasn’t okay. That would be an awful trap.”
“Oh, um, yeah. I suppose so.”
Yore walked up the bank and offered Fanner a hand to help him up. “But I imagine you’ve been treated badly quite a lot, so things that seem petty and cruel to me might be normal to you.”
“I spent almost my entire life in a training facility. Everything was a test.”
Fanner was standing at the top of the bank at Yore’s side now, but Yore didn’t let go of his hand. “That must have been rough.”
Fanner looked down at their linked hands and gave Yore’s a gentle squeeze. “No, not at all. We were given everything we needed and nobody ever hurt us.”
“Were you happy?”
“No,” Fanner said. He didn’t even need to think about that one.
“Emotional hardship can be just as bad as physical hardship. Hell, much worse, sometimes. If I had to choose between letting someone break my legs and spending a day chained up in a dark tunnel, I guess I’d have to make myself some crutches.”
Fanner placed his other hand over the top of Yore’s as well and held on. “Maybe, I guess. I really don’t like being hurt.”
“I don’t think it’s really that different. Maybe if I’d been hurt in the same way you’ve been hurt — which I really don’t know much about but I can piece a few things together — maybe then I’d feel the same way. It’s all just different kinds of trauma.”
Fanner swallowed thickly. His eyes were still aimed at their hands. “It’s not fair that you got hurt so badly. You’re such a good person.”
“Thank you, but also yes. It’s not fair. Bad things didn’t happen to you because you deserved it. Good things also happen to people who don’t deserve them. You just have to take what life gives you and try to work towards wherever you want to be in life.”
“I feel like…” Fanner hesitated. “I think the only thing I really want is to be okay.”
“You’ll get there,” Yore assured him. “I’d say you already are okay, in the sense that you’re safe and you’ll be taken care of from here on out, but I know there’s more to it than that. You’ve been through something big. Heck, in a sense your whole life has been one big struggle. That doesn’t just go away and become fine the second you’re somewhere safe.”
Fanner nodded. He looked like he might cry again.
“Okay, let’s—” Yore started to say, and then he paused and looked up into the trees. He could hear something moving around. “Cookie, I know that’s you. I know what you sound like now. You can’t fool me twice.”
Cookie leapt down from a nearby tree, landing gracelessly, the large bag she was carrying in her mouth sending her toppling forward. Their bag.
“Oh, you got the bag for us. Thank you?”
“Do we have any snacks we can give her?” Fanner asked. “She likes to eat… things. Anything.”
“Just some old biscuits. I left them because our water leaked on the bag and they got all soggy.”
Cookie opened her dark, empty maw of a mouth as wide as she could — which was wider than Yore was entirely comfortable with — and then just held it open until Yore let go of Fanner’s hands, got out the bag of biscuits, and put one in. She swallowed it whole and then took the rest of the bag from Yore and swallowed that as well, bag included.
“Hm,” was all Yore could think to say to that. “Well, all right. Shall we keep going?”
They were a bit behind schedule now, but Yore was still confident they could reach the mage settlement before dark. It didn’t really matter if they didn’t since this area no longer held an active vampire nest, but he wasn’t sure how Fanner would feel about travelling in the dark after everything that had happened.
It was another hour of walking before they reached the start of Yore’s territory. He hadn’t seen or heard Cookie in a while, but he suspected she was still following them.
“This is where my people live,” Yore explained, patting the wooden post that served as a marker. “We’ll cut across to save time, but I won’t take you into our settlement today.”
“Am I allowed to be here?” Fanner asked. “I won’t get in trouble if someone sees us, will I?”
“You’re with me. Of course you’re allowed. But, more generally speaking, we’re allies. There are certain expectations, like that you won’t hunt on or otherwise use our land without explicit permission, but it’s not like you have to be afraid of accidentally crossing the border because it’ll cause a huge incident or someone will attack you or anything. Most likely someone will notice you and come and see if you need any help.”
“Okay. And… you live next to us?”
“No, that’s the centaurs. They can seem a bit imposing at first, but they’ve been allies to the mages from the start. The mage camp is to the east of the centaurs and we’re north of the centaurs.”
Fanner nodded, but from the distant look in his eyes, Yore got the feeling he wasn’t quite taking it all in.
“Don’t worry about it. There’ll be people to help you and show you around for as long as you need it.”
“Okay,” Fanner said, but he still looked worried. Yore really wished he knew what to say to assure Fanner it really would be okay, but perhaps that was just something he’d have to see for himself.
Yore heard the sound of paws running across bare earth long before he saw a pale grey wolf emerge from between the trees.
He gave her a nod as she shifted. “Good afternoon, Kiana.”
“Your mother’s worried about you,” was the first thing Kiana said once she was standing on two feet. “You’re days late.”
“I know. I was delayed, but I’m fine.”
Her eyes skimmed him, but she seemed to decide not to comment on the superficial but very obvious cuts on the side of his face and his neck. She looked at Fanner instead. “Who’s that?”
“Just someone I’m taking back to the mages. Tell my mother I’ll be home as soon as I’m done with that. Also, we’ll need a party to deal with a rock golem. We encountered one on the path. I led it back into the swamp, but you know how they are.”
“They do tend to wander. Okay, I’ll get things moving on that for you.”
Without further conversation, she shifted again and dashed back into the woods.
“Who was that?” Fanner whispered, like he wasn’t quite sure she couldn’t still hear him. Which was fair. Their hearing was quite a bit better than his, though she was far enough away that it wasn’t a concern.
“Kiana. She’s my, uh… cousin?” Not that that really mattered. Some of the members of his pack were related to him closely enough to trace, some weren’t, and it didn’t make a whole lot of difference for the most part. They were all family.
“Oh,” Fanner said. He didn’t sound satisfied with the answer.
“My mother leads the pack, so Kiana will go and consult with her about the rock golem. Kiana’s mostly a scout and a trapper.”
“Oh, okay. What are you?”
“Whatever I need to be.”
Which was a cop out of an answer and not entirely true, but this really wasn’t the time to explain everything to Fanner. Though, if he were truly honest, his reluctance wasn’t just about not wanting to scare or confuse Fanner. He was enjoying this mini vacation from his normal life and he wanted to maintain the separation until he’d completed his task and brought Fanner safely to the mages.
They made it through the rest of the pack’s territory without another interruption.
Yore stopped Fanner at the post that marked the territory’s south eastern corner. “Are you ready for this?”
“No, but…” Fanner shrugged.
Yore offered him a sympathetic smile. “It’s hard, but waiting won’t fix that.”
Fanner nodded. He took a deep breath in and let it out. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
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