Beneath the Grace of Rillifane.

[Twisted Ascension]

It was a spot of black on a darkening sky. Not even that. A speck. An early rising owl or a falcon returning to it's nest. An innocuous sight and not something to be glanced at. It was a big empty sky and who had the time to worry about things in the heavens when every shadow seemed to hold a new danger.

Shivan knew better. Curled in the hollowed bush that had served as his home for the day, he forced his stomach to stop churning, made himself breath. The feel of the bow beneath his fingers was a useless comfort but one he needed regardless as his pale eyes tracked the path of that dot across the sky. Heading south and east. Back to the Hullack then. She was growing bolder by the day, ever more secure in the belief that nothing could threaten her, much less stop her.

How long?

A long exhalation of relief when the speck disappeared into the vast green carpet that was the Hullack. Not long now. A maybe of months if they were incredibly lucky. And the odds of that kind of luck in the face of their recent history were laughable. Weeks then. Strange to think that his death was so close. Had he been one for introspection and worry, that thought would have bothered him. As it was though, he pushed it aside. Soon, but not this night.

The chill breeze washed his face as he rose from his perch on some hillside overlooking the night blackened waters of the Immerflow. Actively bustled around him, small creatures finding shelter while predators began their hunt. A good night. Everything in sync, without the wretched sounds and smells of Arabel to wash over the perfection of the world. What happened here mattered. It wasn't confused by interactions between people so lost to their natures that they'd forgotten their place in the world.

How long before the rivvan decided to colonize this area to cope with their ever expanding needs? Would it be nothing more than stone buildings and cobbled streets in a few short years. Filthy, ignorant humans, covered in vile scents and utterly uncaring of the devastation they brought with them. How much longer could they be allowed to expand unchecked? They were killing the world with their excesses. No better than orcs in some ways. Maybe worse. Humans had the limited intelligence to see what they were doing. They just did not care.

Shaking his head, he pushed those thoughts aside as well and began to move, slipping effortlessly and without thought from bush to tree to stone, from shadow to shadow. That line of thinking inevitably fed the seeds of hatred and contempt growing in his heart. It wasn't healthy to dwell, regardless of how warm it made him feel at times. Didn't they deserve to die for despoiling and raping the land? Wasn't it just?

A quiet night, though he had to slip carefully around more than one pack of emaciated wolves desperately seeking any hint of food. Whatever was starving the poor creatures had not lightened or shown itself. If anything, there were more by the night. It would be a mercy to destroy them. He knew that. Most would die a slow, wretched death. Growing weaker by the night until they could not longer keep up with the pack and were left to eventually die, twitching as their stomach just collapsed from lack. A mercy but not one he could bring himself to commit. Some of them might make it. They deserved the chance, at least.

Two campsites left by the humans from the boats traversing up and down. These he took the time to destroy and bury the.. remains. He set out scent lures once the traces and tracks of the humans was gone and ignored the urge to set a number of traps for the next group. It wouldn't be right. Rillifane would disapprove.

He knew before he saw the third camp that something was wrong. It was in the air. The sharp scent of blood, the feel of suffering in the air. One. Two. Three. Four men. Laying scattered about in varied states, their throats and unwashed bodies ripped, two of them half eaten.

He moved through the makeshift campsite, recreating the would be melee from the tracks. They'd been drinking beside the fire a night ago. The stale stench from the broken clay jars was telling enough. All around the fire with no on watching. Two had died almost immediately, their throats ripped out probably before they realized they was anything wrong. The next tried to run. The claw marks on his body, some fifteen feet away, showed how successful he had been. The last must have had an unpleasant ending. He'd managed to get to get to his weapon, maybe even knew how to use it. There was black fur matted on the end of the club. Most likely they had let him wait while they fed on his friends. Worgs were cruel creatures.

A quick glance at their small boat told him everything he needed to know about them. Ferrymen carrying grain from the north. Fools. There was no real sympathy in him as he buried the bodies and collected their effects. It was hard to sympathize with men who died due to their own stupidity. Maybe if the humans paid more attention to the land around them they would not be it's victims so often. He set the effects in the boat with the grain and pushed it back into the river, letting the current take it further south where some other human would would find it. It was not an uncommon thing.

Once the area was clear, his eyes returned to the damp earth again, seeking the tracks he knew would be there. Worgs were as heavy as they were cruel, and not terribly subtle for all their crafty intelligence.


* * *


He crouched over the bodies of the small Worg pack, grimly surveying his handiwork. There was nothing to be proud of here. Worgs were crafty and strong but they were not truly dangerous if one knew the trick of dealing with them. This had not been an honor fight. It had been a task, a service to his beloved Patron Rillifane, who protected the land and asked his servants to do the same. Removing a blight from the land was his duty.

He was just bending down, knife in hand, to start skinning the worgs when it happened. Stupid of him. He'd thought that crouched and covered in shadows as he was, he was safe. He'd thought that he would hear anything approaching long before it was close enough to be a danger. His senses were very sharp even for elvenkind. Overconfident.

It was like a huge stone crashing into his back, slamming him to the blood soaked earth and forcing the air to explode out of his lungs. His head slammed to the earth and blacked covered his vision for a long drawn out second. He chocked, gasping for air in a daze, wondered distantly why he could not move.

The ripping claws drawing along the hardened leather covering his back brought him back to cold reality. That leather, elven crafted and his most prized possession, saved his life by somehow turning aside the worse of those horribly raking claws. It gave him the time to twist and force his shoulder back hard, sending his attacker off his back.

He hurled the knife into it as he scrambled to his feet, wondering wildly how he had missed one of the worgs. It was no worg facing him though. Rather a huge cat, sleek and black and beautiful, crouched low behind the body of a worg, staring at him with hateful, intelligent eyes. Intelligent eyes, and the kind of hate Shivan had never really seen before.

He'd been afraid before. Once, in a cave with his his bladesister Bital and Moonshade, he'd stared at the largest spider he'd ever seen, a thing taller than he was, and been certain that they all three were going to die. Every time he saw Moyen, he was afraid. But never in his life had he been confronted with so personal a fear. This creature.. this panther, wanted him dead. Wanted him destroyed and erased from the very memory of the world. It hated everything he was with pure intense fury. The sheer heat of that hatred sent a cold shiver down his spine.

He ran. Hard and fast, firing arrows behind him every ten feet as his father had instructed him so many years before. It didn't matter. He was certain a few of those arrows found their mark, but it never slowed in it's almost casual pursuit. It just roared, once, and narrowed the distance between them.

He knew the land. he knew the region, and as he ran, he had time to form a half-baked plan. As the panther was ready to pounce once more on his back, he backed hard to the north, felt the heavy blast of air as it passed within inches, and bolted to a small cave series he knew to be close.

At the mouth of the cave he turned and desperately hurled a thunderstone, his one and only. The cracking boom had the desired effect, eliciting an alarmed roar from the vengeful panther, and gave him the few seconds he needed to dive into the cave. He tossed every scent lure he had onto the ground inside to mask his scent and bolted deeper into the cave. There was a small crevice, thick with shadow. Nothing could see him there. Nothing. He would hide.. wait for it to grow bored. He had to hide.

Huddled in the shadows, cold stone at his back, he forced his breath to slow and listened in terrified silence to the soft padding of the panthers footsteps as it wandered the cave. The sword resting on his knees was gripped so tight that he knew his hand would be sore for a week if he survived this.

Not like this. He could not die like this, alone and afraid in a cave so very far from home. His family would never know. He'd never have the chance to earn his name, to prove himself worthy of the honor of their name. Not like this.

Those steps were drawing closer. His back was beginning to burn now that the blood-rush from the short fight had faded. It was worse than he'd thought. The stone at his back was wet with his blood and he was beginning to smell it even over the scent lures.

Closer. His eyes closed and he mouthed a fervent prayer to Rillifane, beseeching his Lord to hide him well. What could hate with such power? What could put that kind of evil into one of Nature's children?

The steps drew closer and closer and he tried to stop his heart from hammering at his pained chest. Then, they stopped and there was perfect silence.

His eyes opened slowly and he say it, crouched and ready to spring. Staring directly at him as if there were no darkness, as if he were standing bare before the open sun.

They just stared at each other for a long moment. Pale elven eyes meeting hate filled black. And Shivan sighed just once.

"Rillifane, let me live these next seconds well," he whispered into the darkness, resigned. One could not choose when they died. But one could choose how they faced death when it came for them.

Odd, the whisper effected the huge cat. His face twisted into a fur that matched it's eyes. It knew the name. And hated it as it hated Shivan.

One final split second, and the panther roared it's challenge. He screamed his own back, a wordless roar or denial, filled with his own rage. The panthers hind-legs tensed, and it sprang. He screamed once more and hurled himself at it.

He hoped Rillifane was watching.