It’s nighttime. Sentries are posted around Admiral Ahaz’s grounded airships. Naturally, Améline is one of them.
She stares out into the darkness, focusing her senses into the dark and away from the talk behind her. While trying to ignore the gossip behind her, she hears a noise, just at the edge of her hearing.
“What was that?” she murmurs, mostly to herself.
There’s that sound again, louder. One of the duardin looks up from the fireplace and cocks an ear.
“Sounds like a wounded animal. Reckon it’s in pain, but we don’t need to concern ourselves about that.”
But he was already talking to empty air. Améline’s red cloak disappears into the night. He grunts to himself and turns back to his companions.
“Bozdok.”
The Stormcast stalks over the dry earth of Lahar, feet crunching on vegetation from Silverside. She doesn’t bother with stealth, knowing that she wouldn’t manage it with her armour.
The shriek sounds again, close by. There’s no mistaking it; Améline had heard the shrill scream of an animal in pain or terror enough times. She picks up the pace as the familiar smell of blood reaches her. Up ahead she sees a clearing in the vegetation, and prepares to enter it…
The Sand-scurry before her shirks away, wide amber eyes fixing her halberd with a terrified stare…
Améline blinks.
That had been a vision, she had no doubt about it. But she’d never had one so fast and strong before.
Carefully, she sets her halberd down on the ground, and slowly steps into the clearing.
She sees a giant humpbacked hare lying on the ground before her. A leg bleeds heavily from multiple wounds; bites and claw-slashes. Bushy tail curled protectively around them.
A sand-scurry. Améline knows the name from the briefings Breyla had made her read. Even if the vision hadn’t already told her.
The sand-scurry mewls and pushes themselves away from her, before collapsing on the ground from the effort. Fearful amber eyes stare up at her, but in the way a panicked animal is fearful of everything. They rove aimlessly over her, and the darkness beyond.
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you.” Améline murmurs softly. She kneels down before them and starts taking off her cloak, preparing to make a crude bandage out of it. “If you’ll let me, I can heal you.”
Slowly, she shuffles sideways, approaching the sand-scurry’s wounded leg while staying in their line of sight. They whimper, but only shiver as she approaches. Améline isn’t sure, but she feels like they’re intelligent to know her intentions.
When she’s close enough to touch the sand-scurry she lifts up her cloak and starts binding the wounds. The sand-scurry whimpers again and shakes, but stays still as she tightens the cloth. There’s one last pulse of blood, then the bleeding slows to a trickle.
For good measure, Améline takes her pack off her shoulders, places it on the ground and starts rummaging through it for a sphere of Aqua Ghyranis. She’d happily spare one…
Her face smashes into the ground. A monstrous jaw fastens onto her exposed head and bites down. Then there’s only darkness, and the ringing of a hammer on an anvil.
This vision is gone almost as soon as it came, so fleeting Améline almost didn’t have time to heed it. Instincts are already making her stand up and twist around while her mind recovers.
It’s what saved her life.
A blur out of the dark hits her and stumbles her to a knee. A jaw aiming for her neck instead clamps down on her arm, the armour holding against razor-sharp teeth and incredible pressure.
Daisy’s remains, just their skeleton picked apart by the scavangers, lie before her. Améline should have known that this would happen, like with Kip…
The scream of the sand-scurry rouses Améline from her guilt. Her eyes focus on the animal attacking her.
A wolf, one the size of a horse, tries their best to savage her arm. Fierce eyes bore into her, with a cunning gleam that surpassed that of some people she’d known. Despite not being able to pierce her armour, blood clung to their lips and paws.
Anger rushes through her. This had been hunting the sand-scurry. Améline forces herself and the hound to stand upright, and pulls back a fist to strike their chest…
Aengellania’s hand, still in an expanding pool of blood.
It only lasted for a second, but that was all the hound had needed. Paws with claws the size of Khainite knives reach up to tear at her head, and before Améline had recovered her senses she couldn’t block them.
But aid unasked saved her, as it seemed as if the ground itself reached up and trapped the wolf’s paws. Améline hears a cry of ‘Sentinels, loose!’, but all of her attention is focused on her foe.
She brings her fist down, like the wrath of Ghal Maraz.
There’s a crack as her blow connects, and…
Khelyra, Evangeline, both on the ground. Blood pumps energetically out of mortal wounds. No matter how loudly Améline shouts, neither rouse from their rest.
She’s kneeling in the dirt. The wolf’s neck had been snapped by her blow, killing them instantly, but still her anger remains.
The wolf had been the cause of those visions, she is sure of it. And she’d had her fill of visions for a lifetime.
Her anger cools when she feels something press up against her arm. She raises it, admitting the sand-scurry’s head under it. They stare up at her with those wide, amber eyes, but this time fearlessly.
In fact, Améline got the feeling that they were trying to reassure her.
Améline smiles down at them and pats them on the head.
“Don’t worry. They’re not set in stone.”
Still possible, she thinks. But not if she could help it.
Daisy purrs appreciatively and rubs their head against her. It feels like an appriopiate name.
Stormcast and Sand-scurry returned to the campsite, together.
