Header image: https://i.imgur.com/2lIxqgq.jpg

Lia slowly wavered back and forth, her thoughts floating away from her. Her head spun opposite her body. She raised her hand to touch, and felt someone else’s fingers touch the skin of her forehead, warm and dry tips on a clammy surface. She blinked, and pulled away.

The mouth opened, moved to say something. A question. The one it’d just asked. The words came to Lia as through a veil, soft and blurry at the edges.

“…are you tired of fighting yet?”

Lia licked her lips. “What?” she asked blearily. Was she standing, sitting, or lying down?

The mouth stretched into a grin, lips parting to reveal pointed teeth.

“The damsel speaks. I believe she hears as well?”

Lia frowned. “…No damsel. Not done fighting.”

“Yet?”

Lia shook her head. “Never.”

“And yet. All your strength and yet you seem to know only one way to fight.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lia demanded, feeling a little stronger now.

“You’re going to die, madam,” the mouth said flatly.

“Like hell I am,” Lia snarled, clenching her hand into a fist. Immediately, her hand bloomed into an inferno of pain so intense she passed out. When she could see again, she was lying on her back, staring into the night sky. Her hand was laid open and dripping onto the ground below.

Examining it was the owner of the mouth. He was short, maybe four feet, but where a dwarf might have had a beard, he had a set of horn-like growths along his chin, tapering on a point at the bottom like a goatee. With that, he had two actual horns that grew from his forehead, and curled back into a spiral behind his ears. When he noticed her staring, he grinned again, his pointed teeth flashing in the moonlight.

“You’ve opened your wounds, good lady. Make a move like that again, and I doubt there’ll be enough blood left in you to fill a cup.” His voice had a musical lilt to it.

Lia gritted her teeth. “You said you were going to kill me,” she said. “I wasn’t going to lie there and take it.”

The short man tutted. “I said you were going to die, madam. I never said I’d be responsible. If your body’s any judge, you’ll probably handle that business yourself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. Now that the wound on her hand had jolted her awake, she could feel a dozen other smaller cuts and bruises twinging and aching to make themselves known.

“Madam brings an axe, a bag of camping supplies, and a cursed item in the middle of the woods, and looks for trouble,” the man said, reciting the words as if from a schoolbook. “What does that add up to?”

“A grand total of ‘none of your business’,” Lia said, tentatively flexing to see if she could still move her hand. Searing pain shot up her arm, but her fingers twitched. She groaned, and shut her eyes.

“Perhaps I should have left you down there for the owlbears,” the man sniffed. “I hardly see the point in my medicine if you insist on pulling yourself apart every chance you get.”

Lia opened her eyes to see that this was true. The man had pulled out a roll of gauze from a bag, and bandages were already wrapped around the parts of her that hurt the most.

“Thank you for helping,” she said quietly. The man raised a horn-ridged eyebrow.

“Does madam speak truly?” he said. “I’d have expected you to say ‘No one asked you to help,’ or ‘I can take care of myself,’ after which you’d begrudgingly allow me to continue.”

Lia snorted. “No sense refusing what’s already been given. Pays to be polite, at least.”

“Good,” the man said cheerfully as he wrapped gauze around Lia’s hand. “I’d have pushed you off otherwise.”

Lia nodded cautiously. “I have to tell you, though, I don’t have much on me. And there are things I’d die before you took from me.”

The man paused for a second. “Nothing like that, madam,” he said, shaking his head before he went back to wrapping her hand.

“What, then?” Lia said, her voice mimicking the man’s lilt for a second, before she trailed off into silence. “Wait. Down where?” She twisted her neck to look, and immediately regretted it.

Below her, fifty or sixty feet down, was the ground, the trees only a little further up than that. She was lying down on…what? Her cheek pressed against black, smooth wood, the same material her staff was made out of. A branch, she guessed, of a black tree that had suddenly sprouted from beneath her. She looked up and saw, ten feet above her, tangled in a jagged wreath of barren branches, the red ruby, shining like a beacon.

The man smiled wanly. “I wondered when you’d notice,” he said easily.

“I…but…how…” Lia gulped, the words catching in her throat.

“When I arrived, you were about to fight to the death with those owlbears, but suddenly roots sprouted from your staff, and off it grew, with a speed so alarming all I could do was hold on,” the man said, spreading his hands wide.

“How are we going to get down?” Lia gasped, her eyes wide. The bandages finished, she slowly sat back up.

“I shouldn’t worry about that,” the man said, seemingly undisturbed by the situation. He pulled out a flask, and took a sip. “Come sunrise, everyone in your town’s going to see your little arrangement. I’ve no doubt they’ll come looking.”

Lia’s stomach dropped. Everyone in town… So much for a quiet exit, then.

“Hey,” she said, turning to the man, who was now leaning against the tree’s massive trunk. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The short man put his flask down, and wiped his mouth. “Call me Imp,” he said, his eyes glittering. “In exchange for my aid, I want to hear your story.”

“What story?” Lia asked suspiciously.

“The one your scars seem to tell,” Imp replied, gesturing at Lia. “There’s plenty of time before daybreak, and I’d rather not spend it silent.”

“What if I do?” Lia said.

Imp took a dainty sip. “Then I’m not sharing.”

Lia sighed. “Fine. Pass it here.”

Imp winked, and tossed the flask to her. She took a long pull, and sighed.

“Where do you want to start?” Lia asked.

“How about the little scars around your eye?” he said, smiling.

Lia nodded.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archer…