Taking Root (Player-Run Storyline)/Spirit of the Land

The dark-hooded elf tugged on his reins, slowing the sure-footed approach of his antlered mount as he glimpsed a faint flutter of dark fabric against the backdrop of the swiftly accumulating snow. It was an all too familiar sight to the Ardenai hunter; the alpine snows of his homeland in winter had claimed an untold number of unwary travelers. But in Gossamer Valley, travelers were few and those who did brave the harsh year-round wintry conditions tended to do so with purpose.

The stag huffed irritably as Celothor half-slid from the polished black kaajkur and knelt in the snow. The deathly cold froze the perspiration of his frantic ride to the skin of his face, but he ignored the sting as he dug through the fresh snow with gloved fingers. What he found could scarcely be called a sylvan anymore, the fragile remains he uncovered gnawed bare at the limbs and the belly torn open to reveal tattered remnants of entrails.

Celothor grunted in disgust at the grisly sight, shoving the piled snow back to rebury the corpse. Not Linde’s doing, he judged; she knew to stay clear of the civilized races, but that was not all. This man was torn apart as if from several directions at once. This was the work of wolves. Closing his eyes, the hunter breathed a steaming cloud of breath. He was unfamiliar with Sylvankind burial practices, but he knew that although their ways were different their race held the same reverence for the natural world. Inwardly, he hoped this would suffice. Let your body be reclaimed by the land, and let your spirit fly free to join your ancestors. Rising to his feet, he drew the warg fur of his mantle close about his shoulders and clambered grimly back into his saddle. Whatever the cause of Linde’s demise, Celothor decided it wasn’t at the hands of the ill-fated sylvan.

The wind whipped at his hood, howling in his ears despite the covering. He dug his heels into his stag’s flanks and rode on through the conifers, still searching for answers. Any footprints had long been covered by the heavy snow, but Celothor’s keen eyes found what he sought in the faint form of broken branches in the enclosing trees, as if something heavy had careened through the foliage in flight or pursuit. He urged his mount on, following the newly made path at a cautious pace. He heard a faint shuffling sound ahead once the ridgeline came into view, prompting him to halt the stag and quietly dismount. The hunter huffed a low, reassuring noise which the stag acknowledged with the same, and with a pat on the flank he sent him back in the direction they came.

Celothor crept forward, and what he saw filled him with renewed anger. Several lupine forms crowded around the corpse of a caribou fawn feasting. A few more lay unmoving, having fallen before the claws of the now dead snow leopard that lay near her stolen meal.

The ranger unlimbered his bow, the runes inscribed on the glowbark flaring with pale blue and white flames. In a flash, one of the arrows at his belt was nocked and loosed, burying itself in the throat of the furthest wolf. The rest of them scattered and fled at the sight of the strange fire that soon consumed the corpse of their fellow. Celothor moved quickly along the ridgeline, drawing another arrow from his quiver. His fingers had just drawn the white-feathered fletching to his ear when he glimpsed a dark shape leaping at him from his right flank. He turned to face it, but his arrow flew wide as he was bowled over by the snarling beast. The black she-wolf’s lupine features loomed large in his eyes, and his heart felt as though it might burst in his chest.

He had the presence of mind at least to keep his bow imposed between his vulnerable face and throat and the wolf’s slavering jaws, but he knew it was in vain. The hulking creature’s weight was heavy on his chest, the massive paws pushing his back into the snow. But he was determined not to let his life end with him quivering in fear.

Instead he laughed, an almost mad sort of cackle born of anger and defiance.

“So!” He barked in the beast’s face. “The wolf has come for me as I always knew it would,” his reeling mind flashing back to the vision shown to him in his coming of age ceremony when he took the leaf, the one that inspired his tattoo: that of a chained wolf, defiant and raging.

The she-wolf’s dusky lips peeled back from white, razor sharp fangs, her growl low and menacing. “Kill me!” Celothor shouted in her face, his eyes wild with mixed panic and anger. The wolf shrank back as if in surprise, then renewed her imposing stance. “Why do you hesitate?” He uttered brokenly in his frustration at the beast’s apparent insistence in prolonging the inevitable.

A voice in his mind seemed to answer with a question of its own. Why do you rage against what you know to be the natural order?

Celothor let out a snarl of his own. Some lingering effect of the “tea” he’d taken back at the loft, he judged. But he lifted his eyes to the amber gaze of the wolf and in them he saw the truth of those imagined words. This creature was not his enemy. She, too, sought to live; she fought for the right to do so, and she and her pack had won. Linde herself lived and died by the same unspoken law, one as primeval and true as the land of their birth.

The she-wolf’s visage relaxed, and Celothor realized he’d been subconsciously reaching to her spirit, the primal energy connecting them in the same way it had with Linde when he first found her. The paws that weighed so heavily on his chest moments before retreated, and the wolf now merely stood over him impassively as if waiting for him to act. Warily, he pushed himself into a seated position and then extended his gloved hand palm up in a placating gesture as he stood.

She followed him as he made his way down to where Linde’s corpse lay. Her pack had returned to finish their meal, and they growled threateningly at Celothor’s approach, giving him pause. But she answered them with growls of her own, cowing them, and he set about seeing to his fallen friend unmolested. As he unsheathed his knife, he made a silent promise to the noble cat: We should have faced this danger together. You paid the ultimate price for my negligence, and I will not allow such a thing to happen again. Please forgive me and help to remind me of what I stand to lose when I fail to protect those I care for.

The wolves only continued to feed as Celothor made the first slices to free Linde’s pelt from her body, his new companion standing a watchful guard.