Thorns and brambles tore a thousand tiny holes in Ahyen’s flesh as he tore through the undergrowth a pace behind the human. The going was tough. No matter how he raised an arm to protect his face, his cheeks were speckled with tiny welts. Despite facing down years of<span style="font-style: italic">mean</span>terrain, regardless of the tough skin developed on the soles of his feet, they were torn to shreds.<br/><br/>Rich, metallic blood stank to high heaven.<br/><br/>His stomach wrung itself through.<br/><br/>The lump in his throat strangled him.<br/><br/>Normally lightening light on his feet, none of his joints wanted to hold up any longer. Colour fled the peripheral of his vision, nothing felt real, adrenaline and shock was peeling his consciousness clean from his skull like a bird picking a snail from its shell.<br/><br/>Ahyen fought through it.<br/><br/>The danger at their heels was plenty real.<br/><br/>Real enough it could launch its weight and pin you at any given time sinking wretched fangs in hilt deep and return with half of your jugular, sinew and meat like a mechanic dab-handedly stripping wires by the fistful. Every passing tree was suspect, every low hanging branch a trap.<br/><br/>Suddenly a vine-like root caught his ankle painfully beneath him; even his animal night vision hadn’t spared him it. As he hit the floor a terrible thought hit him, COULD he carry her back at all?<br/><br/>Supporting his own weight was… shit—it was hard!<br/><br/>All the colour was swallowed from the centre of his vision now, inky black nothingness followed in its wake. He’d never forced himself conscious in the presence of blood before, what if he passed out with her on his back?<br/><br/>Gritting his teeth, gathering his senses, he planted his hands in the dirt, nails clawing as he struggled back to his feet. A couple of times his ankle almost gave out under him and the pain bolted up his spine like an electric current until he saw stars and slumped to the floor again, but eventually,<span style="font-style: italic">eventually</span>he was stood.<br/><br/>Shaky as hell but standing.<br/><br/>This was no good. Nature spirits were not built for violence and chase… if he carried her they were BOTH food! Arakyn wouldn’t normally actively hunt nature spirits, but then he’d never known the scavenging bastards to deny themselves an easy meal either!<br/><br/>What now?<br/><br/>His inner animal at him shrieked at him to bolt, to shift form and vanish into the path of the trees he knew so well. It’s only one little human, leave her to die, humans die all the time…<br/>NO!<br/><br/>Ahyen glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide and trembling, tears stinging against the cold night air. Someone<span style="font-style: italic">needed</span>to take the death away, it wasn’t fair…<br/><br/>“Goddess, please…” he begged under his breath, voice foreign and alien to him with fear…<br/><br/>One option was left glaring open, it had been there the whole time, but admitting it was harder than running and a thousand times more painful than his torn ankle; what about his life for hers?<br/>What if he stayed and fought to the best he could, at least then she would have time to make it to safety…<br/><br/>“Guide over me,” he prayed shakily under his breath, listening to the noises in the trees drawing ever closer, the clan of arakyn had given to chase… “draw my soul to your light,” hiccupping in terrified sobs, he turned to face the woods, to face the threat head on, “l-l-let me not falter in your sight,”<br/><br/>Inhuman shrieks tore through the air not more than a few meters away.<br/><br/>“LET ME NOT LOSE HEART IN THE DARKNESS,” he screamed back, not only praying, but now desperately trying to drown out their hunting calls with his own willowy lungs, to drown out every image of what was to come, “LET NOT ALL OF HELLS FORCES—“<br/><br/>Another shriek cut him off and he gasped, stumbling back agonizingly, “L-l-let not all of hells forces slow me in the path fate has set for me… oh Goddess… Goddess please… ”<br/><br/><br/>--------------          ------------------------------            ---------------<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Meanwhile…</span><br/><br/>Sweeping everything haphazardly from the desk with one arm, Naeth cleared a decent space for spell casting as useless junk, ink pots, parchment, flower presses, various bric-a-brac clattered to the carpet of the games masters office.<br/><br/>Diving through pockets and the pouches hanging on his belt he spread ingredients across the table like a poker player dealing a cool hand, tracing and tallying each one off with a taloned digit. Caraway seeds, spider eggs, tarot cards, a vial containing some poor souls dying breath (staggeringly expensive and outlawed contraband sixty years ago under General Mallus’ act prohibiting black magic), Lowan fungus (a moss-like growth that, according to legend, only grew on the heels of soldiers fleeing battle) , the dust of a ground mouse skull, all things concerning movement and flitting from one space to the next.<br/><br/>Arranging them roughly, he drew in one last, long breath, letting it fill his lungs until his whole chest ached with pressure, then started chanting the age old mantra necessary in the ancient tongue of magic under his breath.<br/><br/>Real spell casting, the difficult shit like this, meant focusing every single thought, every fibre of your being into one aim. It meant clearing your mind of all clutter that threatened to throw your concentration off of its tracks and Naeth had long since learned that fighting his natural inclination to worry or plan usually meant it would make a terrible comeback of full force distraction half way through the cast.<br/>So, as he inhaled, he allowed his mind to wildly ponder the scenario.<br/><br/>What he had seen through the crows glassy eyes before the arakyn had so rudely smashed it’s frail body into a gory ragdoll against the trunk of a tree. No doubt the bark now wore a painted smear of blood and tiny fluffy feathers tarred there.<br/><br/>Amora was in deep. Why she had bolted for the woods he couldn’t say… it was a desperate and dangerous move, really he should have left her there for the spider folk to pick their teeth with her bones, but she was an unusual specimen and a childhood of squalor and begging had drilled a sense of value and importance in each and every ducat he spent. Amora had been bought for sixty, but when he was done teaching her she’d be worth six thousand!<br/><br/>Problem was that transportation spells cost almost half of that to manufacture that and twice that in mental arithmetic! It was only too easy for the unwary or flaky mage to attempt such heights only to transport half of himself to one place, the other half somewhere else or end up trapped inside the crushing weight of a brick wall or cut perfectly in two by landing in the middle of a pane of glass.<br/><br/>Very messy business.<br/><br/>Not that Naeth faltered, he’d been spell casting for years, it was more habitual and troublesome than dangerous as far he was concerned, experience racked up in the daemons favour!<br/><br/>Ready!<br/><br/>All functions shut off for a moment, his heart stopped, quite literally, dead, every ounce of thought put to work visualising the path to the woods behind his manor, the crisp, minty smell of the leaves, the cold breeze on his skin, distant cries of animals and the soft, floral tang of rosebushes behind him, the opening in the trees, like a beautiful wrought iron walkway into the wilderness beyond…<br/><br/>Gotchya!<br/><br/>Seizing the image, he closed his hands into fists, talons burying themselves into his skin, drawing a bright, fresh sheen of blood. The final ingredient!<br/><br/>The world swirled around him, colours warping, bright tones becoming so rich they glared past his eyes and burned shapes in the back of his skull, shadows swelling, heaving and curling around his skin until they engulfed him completely.<br/><br/>It felt a lot like plunging into a warm bath, for a moment gravity become null, with no heft or lift, as light as air, his clothes and long, dark hair curling into the between space all around him, then suddenly as it happened he was dropped. Reality hit with the full force of cannon fire. Weight and temperature, snapped back into being, leaving every muscle tinging and every nerve ending buzzingly numb.<br/><br/>Right on target though!<br/>He stood on the edge of the woods, dead ahead s frail figure lay slumped on the verge, beautiful clothes he’d bought her torn up, muddied and addled with stray frays of whispy webbing.<br/><br/>“For the love of—GET UP, GIRL!” he snapped, crossing the short distance between them, hooking his arms beneath the soft, warm skin of her arms and pulling her uncertainly to her feet. The almost-tattoo of her name started to burn excitably at the proximity, even it knew where it belonged and was eager to be reunited with the woman that had worn it for so long. Naeth ignored it.<br/><br/>He slung her sorry form over one arm, no such thing as love and care in his touch, and fished through his pockets for a small vial of smelling salts to bring her back, popping the cork with the thumb of the hand he held it in and levelling it under her nose to jump start her.<br/><br/>“Do you have any idea just how much a transportation spell costs me?!” he growled, pocketing the vial and leaving her to splutter and cough as she may, “You’re lucky I’m so damn generous because anyone with half a brain would have left you for dead out there! What were you thinking!? Oh look, a pretty web, let’s just throw ourselves at it, shall we!” he sneered mockingly, “No I’m SURE whatever made a web like that MUST be friendly! I lost a crow! I lost a crow for you! Her name was Talula, she’d curl up in my hair every eveni—“<br/><br/>There was a shriek Amora knew only too well and a flash of movement.<br/><br/>It was over in seconds; the arakyn leading the pack that had been tailing her darted out from the trees, furious and refusing to lose its mark. Its jaws stretched unnaturally wide ready to snap them shut around something’s throat as it pounced, movements unnatural but swift as hellfire, more comfortable on all fours with those sickeningly double-jointed limbs, but Naeth was faster.<br/><br/>Tall shadows streaking across the floor from where moonlight met trees suddenly became animated. They lifted impossibly from the floor at shocking speeds and stretched towards the arakyn, catching it in odd, black netting all of its own. The tendrils wrestled it to the floor in seconds and for the horrified noises the arakyn was yelping, they must have burned to the touch. More and more shadows leapt into life and struck like snakes until there was no more spider critter, only a writhing mass of black.<br/><br/>The arakyns comrades reached the clearing, but hung back against the line of trees, hissing and growling, but not one daring to step a foot out of their branches for fear of ending up like their alpha…<br/><br/>After a few horrible moments of ear splitting wailing the pile stilled, the shadows receded back to their original posts leaving only a crumbling mass of charred bones and the arakyn flock disappeared back to their own territory.<br/><br/>“That’s better…” Naeth half purred, half growled, amber eyes trained dead ahead still, tense and ready to move if he needed to… although truth be told, two big spells like that in one night had him worn out…<br/><br/>Somewhere, still in the woods, a distant scream let the two know that the arakyn had given up with them and turned their attention to a new play thing… Ahyen.<br/><br/>Naeth ignored it, as far as he was concerned their part was done, all the better for them if a group of pissed off critters were distracted with someone else and dropped Amora to find her own feet again, “I daresay you’ve got a LOT of making up to me to do, girl,” he started casually.