[...continued]

Kirdarnn

"Fenn, will you lead?"

“Of course!” Fenn skipped forward, excited to get started. Krid fell in step just behind him. He would stand in the middle where he could reach danger quickly from any direction. Or, that was his plan. The rest of this troup had other ideas. Or a lack of them.

Syrdin disappeared immediately, seeming to scout around. Even now, well-rested and at his best, he could just catch traces of zhem dodging between the trees. 

Fenn, though leading, stopped at every bud and leaf, fawning over them as though each represented the miracle of life on its own. After the tenth-or-so insect spat a most pungent-smelling liquid at them, the Scholar Mell, who had been stopping with him, decided she had had enough. She began pulling Fenn along by his elbow while Galendria trailed behind with a sullen expression.

Krid huffed from his place in the ever-shifting center. His own wife would start a brawl if some other female clung to his arm like that. Poor little she-elf. 

He kept alert. From the trees gleamed the beady eyes of unknown predators. Krid could hear the rustle of wings, the creeks of branches, the brush of his companion’s footfalls in the grass. And the smell—the pungent stench of life invaded his snout like an army until he could neither count the number nor tell one from the next. A distant rustling and thumping in the underbrush snagged his attention. He closed his fist in the air to call for quiet. 

“But there is that shiny blue one!” Fenn pointed to yet another winged critter preening in a bow. It squawked. “I haven’t seen that one before.” He was pleading to Mell to let him stop and sketch it.

“Quiet!” He hissed, half-frustrated, half afraid.

He gestured them over to him as he snuffed the air. A foul stench approached from the side, and he could sense the vibrations of several hefty feet rattle up through his tail. 

“Hide here,” he shepherded them into a patch of ferns and bid them to squat. 

In the shadows, Syrdin joined them with a whisper, “a herd of six beasts. Blind, but great hearing. By the look, aggressive.” 

Krid startled, then nodded. It was good information. Information he wished he’d had sooner. They could have stayed out of the brush if they were blind. It was easier to be quiet without leaves against you. He held a finger over his mouth and met the eyes of each of his companions. “Hold very still,” he mouthed.

Hidden, he turned toward the danger. The first one emerged, silent, uglier than a mudstone guppy. It was half the height of a man at its shoulder and fatter than an autumn pig. It had dirty, tattered hair hanging from it, and white bones fanned up from along its spine. A fleshy, wide nose huffed at the ground, flanked by long tusks the lengths of a man’s forearm. He might have called it a boar if not for the bony spine and long, flapping ears that dragged on the ground. Most disturbing, it had no eyes. It walked on narrow-toed feet quietly. All along its path, it turned up plants, licking up insects with a quick tongue. 

Five more followed it. He could see plain as the sand and sun why Syrdin had guessed they were aggressive. Deep scarring marked every one of them. In zig-zags and webbing, their flesh bubbled up hairless and mangled. Even the smallest one bore long scabs running down its body. As he watched, he strategized. Most likely, those ears were sensitive, and he could confuse them with noise.

One of the not-boar sniffed in their direction and croaked out a noise. Krid gripped his hilt. A rustling in the woods turned its attention to where the little one upturned the roots of a fern to reveal a colony of bugs. The larger one snorted and charged, tossing him aside. Fresh goring glittered with blood on the side of the runt as it sailed into a tree. It wailed, squealing as it impacted. After, it righted itself and continued its rooting ignoring the wound.

Anger churned in Krid’s stomach, a power building. It was the utmost shame of these creatures to abuse the weak in this way. But they were mere beasts. Dangerous beasts. One could toss another meters. Even the runt easily would weigh 45 kilos [100 lbs]. He kept himself in check. Perhaps, in a fight, I could turn them against each other.

Every wide-eyed breath of his companions sounded to him as loud as thunder. Still, they kept on rooting. If the beasts knew of their existence they did not acknowledge it. One approached and began overturning the roots at Krid’s feet. It took every bit of his control not to move. Gale’s breath hitched behind him, and he knew by the smell of her fear that she withheld a whimper. 

The beast crunched up a beatle then sniffed the ground. His tusk brushed Krid’s toe. At the difference in texture, he shot out his tongue. He licked it. Krid had no feeling in the claws of his toes, but he could scarcely believe what had transpired. The beast paused. It must have been nasty, because the creature billowed an ugly sneeze, splattering Krid’s knickers with snot. Finally, it wandered away, its fellows following it. They walked around the five companions as though they were nothing but odd, squatty trees.

Still he waited, waited until they were out of sight, out of hearing, til their stench began to fade. His companions began to shift uncomfortably, though at a glare from him they did not speak.

Finally, Krid relented. “They must be gone by now.” 

Gale sighed and flopped on the ground. “I thought my legs were going to give out from crouching.”

“Hear hear!” Mell had had the foresight to kneel, but now rubbed her knees.

Fenn stood and pushed up his glasses. “A most unusual creature. I’ll have to look it up.” At a warning glare from Kird, he added, “later, of course.”

“Yes, that’s going into the ol’ memoir for sure.” Mell hauled herself up. 

They resumed their disorganized, dallied pace, if not a bit subdued for a while. The squat trees with many branches and broad leaves melted into ones with longer, smoother leaves. These, Mell had to pull Fenn past, as they had odd clusters of fruit. Those transitioned again to trees with deeper, knottier bark. Everywhere they went, little creatures not unlike the desert roo-mice skittered out of their path. 

Syrdin appeared from the woods with something in zheir hand. “Fenn, you got a name for little people with butterfly wings?”

“Pixies?” he whirled from a shiny bug with two arched claws like scorpion tails. “Where?”

“Don’t those have dragon-fly wings? And green clothes? Or was it no wings?” Mell asked, looking between him and Syrdin. 

“That’s the marsh variety. Other varieties have–”

“Pixies?” Krid repeated the strange word. The middle sound hissed strangely in his mouth. “Is it a bug?”

“Hm, no. sparrow-sized, elf-like, with a faint glow.” Syrdin held up a tiny blue stone. “This one threw an egg at me.” Zhe tossed it to Fenn, who fumbled the catch. It dropped onto the roots below him, cracked and oozing yellow and purple fluid.

“Did you see where it went?” Fenn asked. 

“Are we going to ask it for directions?” Gale bounced on her toes, excited.

“Are they friendly?” Krid growled. The lesson of scorpions and snakes was that creatures of any size could be dangerous, not just large beasts. These three seemed not  to know.

Another egg hit the ground at Mell’s feet. A shrill cackle cut through the din of insects, and Krid tensed. He put a hand to his hilt. Sparrow-sized. Though he knew little of this creature's dangers, methods of attack ran through his head. Hit it with the broad side of my blade; use my breath or claws if I must.  

“Follow it!” Fenn leapt that direction, triggering another squeal of delight from the creature. 

Krid charged after him, close at his heels. If his sworn brother faced danger, Krid would be by his side to protect him. A lack of planning would not get Fenn killed. Not while Krid watched over him.

Fennorin

He dashed after the pixie. She kept giggling. One moment, she was on their left blowing a raspberry, and the next she threw a projectile–egg, berry, or mysterious brown object–from behind him. 

“Slow down!” Mell huffed behind him. 

“I don’t want to lose it!” Fenn kept searching for it, never catching more than a glimpse of a portly little body with too-big ears and vibrant hair that matched the leaves. 

“I don’t believe it wants to be lost, Fenn.” Galendria followed it with her gaze, smiling. Smiling. Just as she had smiled to help them in their search of gods and temples. It should have shocked her. Or at least frightened her. “She’s enjoying this too much to leave,” she finished.

Gale was right. Fenn slowed to allow Mell to keep pace. He kept up the game, dodging her missiles and jumping to see her as she laughed. It encouraged her to keep going. Gale joined in, giggling with the creature. A couple steps behind him, Krid clawed a handaxe, uneasy. He sidestepped a brown pellet that landed at his feet.  

“Well, at least Gale is having fun,” Mell sighed. She leaned against a tree. The pace was still quick for her, it seemed. 

“She shouldn’t,” Fenn said, even though he himself had begun to enjoy it. “She should go home,” he whispered to Mell. “Krid is right to be wary. It could be leading us to trouble.”

“Go home? Can she do that?” Mell almost dodged an egg. It oozed in a small splatter down her cloaked shoulder. “I thought she’d be arrested.”

It hit him like a punch in the stomach. The little nut that hit his forehead bounced off almost unnoticed. Gale could not return. He had been concerned about her fall in society if she aided with his theft. But she had been there when the Everguard chased them through the Door, when he had hurt the Captain. Gale was an accomplice. To return would be to face exile. 

For him, that was hardly a punishment. But it was her whole life. 

He watched her chase the pixie around a tree, laughing as freely as a child hunting butterflies. He felt he was watching her in their youth run around the forests, prancing unawares on the edge of a ravine. 

“Frosts,” he squeeked. “Does she even realize?”

“I think she must.” Mell tugged him along. They were falling behind. “And she must think something here is worth it.” She winked back at him. 

Does Mell mean me? “What could be worth so much loss, only to risk more for so little?”

“You worry for her that much?” 

“She entered this realm ignorant. She has none of our knowledge, our experience, and that is pitifully little preparation even for us.”

“And the rest of us?” Mell raised a brow as she stepped carefully across a tangle of roots. “Me? Yourself?”

He studied her for a hint of her meaning. Naivety? “I suppose we are both ignorant as well, though less. It is hardly my first time. Gods know that I entered Hethbarn with no knowledge of the wider world. But that was not a wild land. This?” he gestured to the forest. As if to emphasize, a leaf opened its mouth and caught a passing beetle on its tongue, pulling it in. 

Mell glared at the predatory leaf. “No, Fenn. Worry. Aren’t you concerned for the rest of us?”

He hesitated. He did worry a bit, he supposed. “Krid is a warrior, you can heal. And Syrdin… might be the most dangerous thing within a kilometer, maybe. And so what about me?” He shrugged himself off. I’m not important.   

Mell emitted an exaggerated sigh. “You’re hopeless.”

Odd, she usually tells me I’m optimistic. “I’m just saying that you and I are better prepared for danger. I’m hopeful for our chances. It is not so for her.” If Gale responded nonchalantly to pixies, a known tickster, he hated to imagine how she would face a hag. She might enter its hut without ever needing to be charmed. 

“No,” Syrdin rounded a tree to face him, “you are not prepared for danger.” Pale eyes burned from the shadows of zheir hood, zheir linen-bound arms crossed. “Leave those situations to the dragon and I. No one should aim to be hurt.” 

Fenn jolted to a stop. “R-right.”

He gazed past zhem to Galendria just in time to see the vibrant blue line of mushrooms at her feet. “Stop!” He yelled. She turned to him, eyes wide. An egg hit her head, dripping down her hair. He sped up to her. “You almost walked straight into their hollow.”

At the noise, more pixies gathered, giggling in their tinkling voices. Some flitted between open knots in the trees, but many paused mid-flight to watch the new arrivals. A portly one here, an impossibly twig-like one there, all clothed in the finest of leaf fashion. Fenn found himself gawking back.

Mell joined him at the border where the ground dimpled downward into a lower oval a few meters across. “Um, Fenn, wasn’t walking straight up to their hollow always the plan?”