“Move!” A burly hand shoved Uta by her shoulder.
She stumbled slightly, her weaveleaf shoes ripping free of the highgrass. It had been hours since the cultists snatched her from her gathering party. They killed Ina and Hota without mercy, leaving their bodies to cycle once more with the realm. They only needed her and the trek they were making didn’t need extra mouths to give them away. The cultists had bound her hands, thinking as a priestess and healer of Mila she might have some extra trick to call from the wind.
She looked at the braided rope, it reeked of oil. Binding her hands together and wrapped around her neck and back. If she tried to escape or defend herself, they would light the rope and watch her burn. So she walked, farther and farther away from the safety of the Sentinel Bones of her home. Across an open stretch of field, the moonlight shone bright and she got a better look at her captives then their torchlight could provide.
All the cultists were dressed not as she expected, no hooded robes and wave bladed daggers. They adorned themselves in leathers, sturdy enough to turn blade or fang. Scrimshaw talismans hung from any loose end that they could, crude attempts at magical wards Uta had seen on more primitive tribes during the trading seasons. The only who held her bindings, the others called him Honda, was adorned in amber battlemages garb, a plated cuirass with gold amber silks. A long polearm that acted as both staff and hiking pole in his other hand. His hair cropped short but wild like the mane of a ghurlion.
Honda caught her looking at him and laughed, “Do you like what you see priestess?”
Her lip curled in disgust,” I’ve never been one for mutts.”
His response was an explosive laugh. “You’ve got quite the wit for a temple girl, good we’ll need it.”
They came to the edge of the fields, the cultist leader had been following a trail that had been hidden to Uta’s sight. As far as she could tell, they were dragging her to the opposite side of Drakengrad for no reason. Once the light of Hysh had disappeared and the firmament came to bare, her patience had finally worn too thin to stay silent. “What corner of Drakengrad are you fanatics dragging me? Would killing me with my friends not be good enough, you have to sacrifice me to your Fell godbeast?”
Honda looked at her with an amused smirk and looked back at his fellows with mirth,” You here that? She thinks were going to sacrifice her to the Fell Dragon!” The cultists responded with muted chuckles. The hike had worn them down as well.
Stopping fast, he yanked the ropes to pull Uta closer. Her faced scrunched in disgust, he smelled like the beast he modeled his fashion after. “No, temple girl, your going to give him life. you don’t see the trail because you can’t conjure the Amber winds like I. Look closer in the moonlight.”
He forced her by her neck to look down at the ground, lowering his polearm to make clear what he sees. She felt something surge in her soul, he was working some magic on her, giving her beastsight like his. Her eyes drank in the moonlight and saw the trail clearly. Something large, easily a two ghuroch lengths in width, had dragged itself through here, but its trail was odd in a more spectacular way. Along the edges in the mounded dirt, dozens of crystal clear flower buds were growing. She had never seen such verdant growths before, but she had heard tales of them from the elders. Ahead was felled trees and broken dirt, the thing the cultists were tracking was destroying everything in its path and leaving rejuvenated bounties behind. It took only a notes moment to understand.
“A gladewyrm!,”She shouted shaking off his hand,” Are you mad? Only the woodkin can control an endless spell of that kind and they’ve been gone since Old Bones’ committed his atrocity.”
“Why do you think we grabbed you instead?” He growled, cutting her bravado,” Its a beast of Jade magics, which we need a jade witch to control and an amber one to guide-” he stopped suddenly sniffing the air and closing his eyes.
He opened them a heartbeat later, turning to his followers,” We make camp here, we just lost our moonlight.”
As if on que, Uta saw the night truly take hold as clouds blocked out the sky silently. As the cultists pitched their hide tents and a pair traveled deeper along the trail to gather kindling, Uta wondered. It was so quiet this far out into the wilds, no chirps of insects or the calls of nighttime birds. Even the highgrass stood silently, with no wind to make it dance and whisper.
It was discomforting, this quiet. Mila is a place of life and song. Not a hour goes by without one of the choirs reciting at least one rendition of Emerald Wylds. This quiet was smothering, it held her attention and her heart. Her heart, it was so loud now. Thumping faster and faster, something, anything to fill the silence.
Crack!
“Get a hold of yourself temple girl,” Honda had slapped her, knocking her free of her panic.
She was damp in a clammy sweat, her hiking garb nearly soaked. She wiped her brow on her sleeve and pulled her woolen roll from her gathering basket. Apparently sometime had passed in her mental panic. A clearing had been cut from the highgrass, and a firepit of encircled stones.
Honda shook his head, his stinking breath now coiling in steam from his mouth,” Sleep, I need you at your best when we find that gladewyrm tomorrow.” He sauntered off and took a wineskin from one of his followers as he planted himself next to the campfire. He looked back at Uta for a moment and dangled the still attached rope.
Uta didn’t care about the binding or the Gladewyrm, she just happy that the cultists had taken to singing coarse drinking songs. It was no Emerald Wylds but it would do for tonight. She curled up the best she could with her bindings. A shiver shook her being, it must be the dampness from the sweat before. Summer nights were never this cold in Mila.
Uta awoke to nothing, silence and cold. The fire was out and the camp was quiet. Something aside from her bedroll was covering her. She shook a bit off to get a better look, and bit her tongue to stay quiet. Green needles, like that of a pine. She slowly turned her gaze upon the campfire. Several cultists sat silently staring at the glowing embers. Soft windless snow drifted down on them, piling on their head and shoulders.
She looked up and her eyes widened. She had laid her head in a highgrass clearing and awoken under the shade of a grove of evergreens. She reached her hand out and touched it, drawing back a thin sap line. Real, not an illusion. She looked at her wrists, and hope worked its was into her heart. Her bindings were loose, and Honda was nowhere to be seen.
Getting up slowly to a low crouch, Uta removed the rest of the binding silently as to not awaken the ones around the campfire. She didn’t know where Honda was, but as long as she wasn’t bound she had a chance. She couldn’t see out farther than the evergreen, or past the highgrass from that matter. She needed something to light the way, and those cultists had torches. She had no actual grasp on the winds of magic like Honda assumed she did. She was a priestess, not a wizard. As such fire would have to light her path home.
Pulling her hunting knife from her boot, hidden from the searching of the cultists when they first captured her, she crept slowly up to the nearest cultist. The pine needles covered her steps, silent as the night that engulfed them. She made her plan as she went, time would not be on her side. She counted six around the remains of the fire, that meant six more were out elsewhere including that mutt Honda. She would slit one of their necks and light one of their torches with the embers.
Uta grinned to herself, even if for just this moment she was not the prey, she would try to enjoy it. She reached her target, reached out with a shaking hand. Just a single moment is all she needed, and she could break away. She grabbed a fistful of snowy hair and pulled back hard to expose a vulnerable neck to her blade. Her breath left her, too scared to even scream.
His eyes were gone, bloodied carved holes in a dead skull. His mouthed was filled to the brim with pine needles, like an overstuffed scarecrow. Her target, his exposed neck, was already gone. Only a shoot of pine propping up his corpse. She shuddered, something horrific had found them, and the crack of a twig told her it had not left. She looked up to meet their attacker, and froze.
Uta stood there, one hand with the cultists head pulled back and the other with a dagger held high. The other cultists were propped up the same as each other, a grim scene repeated one after the other. Each with their own silent attacker.
Mimicking her movements in complete silence, five others stood over the cultists. Smooth barked bodies standing three heads taller then her, opening at the chest like a vested garment to reveal pale snow white flesh. Each grabbing a stuffed cultists in a needle thin claw like wooden rapiers, their matched pair raised high above their heads ready to strike down upon their victim. Each, like her, stared intensely at their opposite across from them. Sunken hollow eyes in pale gaunt aelven flesh, a wide mouth of pine needles caked with dried blood.
Uta did not dare to move, these were not the sylvaneth she had heard of. There was no song in the air, no life in their wake. Silence was their medium, and their victims the canvas. Her partner did not break its gaze, its mouth quietly twisted into a gnarled smile void of joy.
Her heart dropped, it broke character meaning the performance was done. The others, matching its joyless smile of pine needles, turned to face Uta. She closed her eyes, if she was to torn down here. She wouldn’t do them the honor of bearing witness to it.
In the quiet, she waited to die. She would return to the cycle, become one with Mila like her ancestors before her. Pain would be nothing compared to being one with Mila.
The moment when on to moments, moments became minutes. Her arms were growing tired. Despite accepting death, she was locked with fear to prevent the end. She felt the snow begin to layer on her, a funeral shroud for a doomed woman. Uta felt pressure build in her chest, and realized she had been holding her breath still. Noticing it made is so much worse. Her heartbeat filled her head, and shook her hands. Winter was always hard of her people, so many of the weaker villagers leaving for the indentured safety behind the walls of Drakheim. The cold chipped at her people’s hearts and she hated it for that. She coughed out a laugh, strange she was cursing the cold of all things in this moment.
“Please Mila,” she gasped,” Let me die warm.”
Her plea was answered with a deep bestial scream and a snap to silence it. A wave of warmth washed over her, gasping at the sudden deluge and opened her eyes. The needle mouthed aelves were gone, and the air stank of blood. She saw the crimson pool below her and her arms fell limp to her sides.
Uta heard something whistle in the air, and a branch jam end first into the ground in front of her. No, she realized, not a branch.
Honda’s battlestaff.
She heard wood creak and needles drop in droves around her. She shut her eyes again, locked tight in terror. Branches snapped and the earth shook. Her fear locked her in place once more. She didn’t want to die here, cold and alone, she wanted to be brought into Mila’s cycle the same way the ancestors did. Buried in the warm earth around the Sentinel Bones, sang into the cycle by the choirs.
She decided she alone would have to do for her.
Deep in the wylds
Her voiced, alto in pitch, echoed out amongst the evergreens. The rumbling earth halted and the creaking stopped.
Beyond the gaze of thunder
Uta opened her eyes. One of the evergreens had bent its canopy down and moved its bloodcaked needles to show its truth. A gnarled old face, pine needle teeth and eyes of sap dripping hollows, stared at her in true wonder.
Lies the lands of Mila
Dragon of Emerald
Whose bones
Tend our Land
And we tend in turn
It was a simple song, one of the first the youth learn to honor Mila. Uta believed she only had a moment left so she sang only it. She stared at the ancient pine. Long did she expected to be riddled with needles or impaled on a branch but the moment never came. She saw the troupe of murderers from before charge from the darkness, mirrored in their silent movements by two more troupes of five. Her inhaled quickly, and she repeated the verse.
The ancient raised itself high again. It towered over the evergreens, yet made no noise as it brushed against them. It looked to its counterparts, miniscule compared to it. Without a word, they began to step back from her. One by one, she watched as they prowled behind the evergreens. Disappointment marred their faces as they stepped behind the trees and disappeared. She watched as each on left, not once faltering in her song.
As the last stepped away, she turned back to the ancient.
She was alone in the moonlight.
Not one to look a gift gryph in the mouth, she snatched up the polearm and ran.
Not once stopping the reciting, her voice a garbled hoarse echo of what it was. She made it back to the great skull of Mila and the tree that grew out of it as her home that looked so beautiful in the midday sun. Ecstatic to see such wonderful leaved trees and Sentinel Bones, she broke into a fatigued sprint to reach the guarded lift.
Ida, a kind man and one of the tribe’s many lift guardians, spotted her and ran out to help her. His robes and weaveleaf armor deep green, compared to the bloodstained mess of Uta’s own garb. He wrapped one of her arms around his shoulders and half carried her the rest of the way. Once she reached the warm safety of the lift, she collapsed onto the lacquered wood wheezing ragged breaths.
“What happened to you? Where are Ina and Hota?” Ida questioned as he pulled the lever to raise the lift.
Uta gasped and wheezed in respone, her voice had given out and was not coming back anytime soon.
“Alright, lets get you to the healers and we can work from there.” he nodded to her in his smooth kind voice.
The lift took several minutes to reach the top as it always did. Ida passed Uta, who was already asleep during the ascent, to the healers who were already waiting for them at the top. Tohru, his rotund partner in guard, clapped him on the shoulder,” She’ll be alright, she’ll tells us the whole story when she’s recovered.”
“I know, but she sounds like she had been running all night and morning while singing Mila’s Verse,” Ida said as he turned to look out at surrounding wilds. The view from above stretched from miles around, unbroken forest and verdant greenery. “Covered in blood and no wounds to speak of as well.”
Tohru mouth curled and sighed as he looked out with Ida. The portly guard tilted his head squinted. “Hey Ida?”
“Yeah?”
“Has that pine tree always been there?”
