Private Tales Feral Animals

[Sable]

Sable sucked in a ragged breath as the pressure on her throat eased. The moment her airway opened, she tore the chain from her neck with an impatient snarl, her jaw set so tight her teeth ached.

Her eyes dropped to the sobbing elf beneath her. Blood welling bright as wine around the blade still buried in her shoulder.

Pathetic.

Sable’s hand came down without hurry, splaying flat across Yavanna’s sternum and pinning her in place with effortless strength. The gesture wasn’t violent. It didn’t need to be. It was insulting in its ease.

“You think you can choke me out?” she exhaled, still catching her breath but steady now, anger sharpening every word. A humourless, husky laugh broke from her chest. “Elf, I’ve fought ogres the size of carriages and they didn't manage it either."

She leaned in, close enough that her breath brushed the elf’s cheek, warm and steady, utterly unbothered by the pain she'd 'inflicted.

“You are outmatched,” Sable murmured low in warning. “Outmuscled. And if you try that again, you won’t be conscious long enough to regret it.”

“Now,” Sable hissed. “We’re going to try this without the kicking. Without the grabbing. Without the fucking talking and without you pretending you’re capable of killing me.” Her lips curved in cruel amusement.

“Unless you’d prefer I put you to sleep and drag you the rest of the way. Or, if you're quite fond of pain, there are plenty of other ways in which I can hurt you without killing you.." she said, twisting the blade a fraction.

“Choose. Are you going to behave?"

 

[Yavanna]

Another shriek of pain pierced the air as the woman twisted the knife in Yavanna's shoulder. Tears fell, hot and streaming down her face.

"Fuck," she moaned, legs squirming on the ground. Her toes curled and she hunched with the pain, wanting to thrash about and scream again but she didn't. Wouldn't let two centuries of existence be torn away with a whimper and a slash. She could feel the blood pool under her back, warm and sticky, clinging to the fabric of her dress. Ruined. Just like her shoulder. Just like her life if the dreadlord had her way.

"You fucking stabbed me," she hissed through her teeth, ending with another whimper as pain lanced through her body.

What did all the magic in the world matter if she could not access it now? Rolling around in the muck in a dress, trying to outmuscle an armored dreadlord seemed so foolish. But she tried to buy time. She did not know if it worked.

"Fine, yes. Just, get this out of me," she gasped, amber eyes wide and shimmering with the agony and more standing tears.

Sable

 

[Sable]

The sobbing didn’t move her. Not the tears, not the trembling, not the soft collapse of pride cracking under pain.

If anything, Sable felt the faintest of satisfactions. A warning finally delivered. A lesson absorbed.

She let out a short, annoyed huff, then, without a word of comfort or any warning at all, she gripped the hilt and ripped the blade free. A wet sound followed it. The blood welled slowly, rather than spurting all over the place. Good. She’d aimed carefully enough. All the same pain but less... messy.

Sable rose in one fluid movement, leaving the squirming elf on the floor, not bothering to spare her a glance as she stepped over her and strode to look outside.

The forest stretched out below, lush and deceptively tranquil. Grey eyes swept the endless expanse of green for movement of friend or foe. For archers. For the shimmer of magic. For anything that meant more work. Nothing. For now.

“Rest,” she ordered dryly, not looking back. “You’ll need it for the walk.” There was no sympathy in the command. No gentleness. Just the practical truth of someone who had every intention of dragging her prisoner, bleeding or not, through miles of forest until the mission was done.

 

[Yavanna]

For once, Yavanna did as the dreadlord instructed. What else could she possibly do? She hoped that her people would find her. Fal'Addas would not just abandon her, would they? She did have enemies among the princes, to just let her be handed over? She closed her eyes and curled up where she lay, unwilling to even move back to the cot.

Not sure she had the strength to, or that her shoulder would support her weight if she tried to push herself up.

But the rotted wood felt so hard against her back that eventually she could bear it no more. Wincing, she pushed herself up with her good arm and nearly fell back over as a fresh wave of pain pummeled her.

Struggling forward, Yavanna toppled onto the cot, her dress a mess and blood crusting on her skin. She shut her eyes tight again and tried to pass out.

It proved easier than she thought and in moments she drifted away. At least in her dreams she was still free.

Sable

 

[Sable]

Silence.

It was a strange silence. A kind she’d never known in Vel Anir, where everything was always loud. Here, there was only the forest breathing. Leaves whispering against one another like soft conversation, and the chirps and calls of forest life. A soft breeze of fresh, clean air brushed across her face in gentle strokes.

Her jaw unclenched. Shoulders loosened beneath her armour. She was stranded, potentially hunted, and the elf nearby wouldn't hesitate to strangle her in her sleep, but... She had never felt more calm.

She flicked a glance toward the cot. The elf’s chest rose and fell shallowly, her face slack with exhaustion. A pretty thing, she noticed again, except for the ears. The ears were a shame. Her gaze moved to the wound in hers shoulder. Sable felt nothing about it. Not triumph. Not guilt. Just the simple assessment that her prisoner was no longer a threat, at least, not for now.

When at last she was certain the elf’s breathing had slipped into the deep, heavy cadence of true sleep, Sable rose. Her steps were soundless on the earthen floor, a habit long ingrained, and she came to kneel beside the cot. She inspected the wound, still bleeding slowly. She had no linen, but she cast a look over Yavanna's 'attire'. So much fabric meant only for beauty and decoration, trailing uselessly, delicate as spidersilk and just as impractical. Wasteful, but workable.

With careful fingers she cut a length of the excess, one that fluttered and draped without offering warmth or modesty. Sable wound the strip beneath the elf’s arm, across the angry wound at her shoulder, drawing it snug enough to support without waking her. The makeshift bandage tied off neatly, a knot small and secure against pale skin.

Sable sat back onto her heels, watching the rise and fall of Yavanna’s chest, a thin ribbon of moonlight tracing the line of her cheek. Then she turned away, letting the quiet reclaim the space between them.

She sat with her back against the cold stone just outside, her attention drifting upward. The sky bled slowly from blue to violet, to ink. A scattering of stars blinked awake one by one. Fireflies rose in slow spirals of light like tiny, flickering lanterns.

She watched them until her breathing fell into rhythm with the forest. Until the constant tension riding her spine eased. Until her eyes blinked slow and heavy. Her hand rested atop her blade. The door was bolted. The elf unconscious... And in the hush between one heartbeat and the next, Sable’s chin dipped and she drifted slowly to sleep.

 

[Yavanna]

Yavanna awoke to the smell of fire and smoke. She lurched to her feet, wincing as pain flared in her shoulder. The elf spared a glance to see the wound bandaged. Her brow furrow. Did the dreadlord...

Why.

Her lips pulled back in a snarl. No matter. The pox take that woman.

Yavanna hurried over to the battlement and peered over. All along the base of the tower, torches glimmered in the morning twilight.

Finally, her people had come to save her at last. She peered down, trying to see if she could make out any familiar features, but saw only hulking and hunched forms, furred and maned.

Her blood chilled.

"No," she whispered into the air, fear spiking through her.

How close were they to the savannah border? Her throat closed up and she tried to swallow down the rising panic.

Below them, crowding the base of the tower, were dozens of Beastmen from the Aberresai Savannah.

Sable

 

[Sable]

Sable was already in motion before the elf had fully found her voice. She evaluated like a soldier, quick and cold. Facing the savages head on was stupid when she couldn't make out how many there were. Either way, she was vastly outnumbered. Up here, she could at least funnel the attackers to a narrow point and break them one at a time and they might endure.

She drove her shoulder into an old cabinet, shoving it across the stone floor until it scraped hard against the door. Whatever else she could find was wedged beneath the latch to brace it. It wasn’t enough, not against what waited below, but it was something.

"Don't suppose they're friends of yours." she rasped, voice edged like broken glass. Sable crossed the short distance between them in two strides and reached to turn Yavanna's face toward her, it might have been tender if not for the firm grip on her jaw and the stern, icy gaze she levelled her with.

"If they breach this tower, you do not run. They will chase you. They will enjoy chasing you. And when they catch you, and they will, they will tear you apart for sport, or do far worse."

Her fingers loosened, though her stare did not.

"Right now, I am the only one who does not want you dead. So you will stay close, and you will do as I say. Are we understood?" she said over the sound of banging and crashing below as the door gave way, and the beasts started up the many stairs.

 

[Yavanna]

A moment of stunned silence at the woman's fingers on her face, searing against her skin with the indignity of it. And... some other emotion. A thrill.

"You can't be serious," Yavanna guffawed, "You think you can take them all by yourself?"

She would have crossed her arms but for the manacles around her wrists. Yavanna winced at the sound of the door splintering and giving way. These were beastman from the savannah. They preferred to overwhelm with numbers and savagery.

The dreadlord was right. Used to hunting prey across the great grasslands, they would catch them if they ran. But if the dreadlord thought she could fight them all, then she was a fool. They would either be eaten immediately or taken as captives and... Yavanna shuddered.

"You need my magic."

Snarling from below and the thudding of paws and hooves announces the warband's charge up the stairs of the small tower.

"Take this collar off me or we will both die here, human."

Sable

 

[Sable]

Sable barked out a low, humourless laugh. “And let you turn that magic on me the moment you get the chance?” Her grip on her blades tightened, metal glinting as she stepped between Yavanna and the stairs.

“You think I survived this long by being naïve?”

Boots pounded the stone below. The growl of beasts rose like a tide. She didn’t look at the elf, she didn’t need to. Her whole stance was an unyielding refusal.

“I don’t need your magic. I need you breathing. Just stay the fuck behind me." Her voice was as calm as frost, though the snarl of the warband drew ever closer.

She tilted her head just enough to catch Yavanna’s eye, even as she braced herself to meet the first body that breached the door. The door that was rattled again and again before it started to crack, then to smoulder, and smoke began filling the chamber.

 

[Yavanna]

“Cave dwelling imbecile,” Yavanna muttered under her breath. She retreated away from the groaning door, moving so that her back was to the edge of the tower wall. She looked over at the drop. A long way down.

Far enough to kill her?

Yavanna thought ending over two centuries of life by throwing herself off a tower seemed so terribly banal. What a whimpering end to her story.

A sudden thought crossed her mind. Awful. What if the fall only broke her legs? Then the monsters from the Savannah would drag her off and she would be even more helpless should they choose to peel her flesh from her bones.

The elf looked up and away. How would she survive this moment? Had the spirits of the Falwood forsaken her? The pain throbbing in her shoulder indicated they may very well have.

Then the door burst asunder and the first bodies of Beastmen came crashing through, all tooth and claw and bone-ax.

Yavanna let out a scream.

Sable

 

[Sable]

Sable did not flinch at the insult, nor at the scream that tore from Yavanna’s throat. She had no space in her mind for anything but the potential death rushing up the stairs in a pack of snarling bodies. Her world narrowed to the jagged frame of the doorway and the killing that needed doing.

She planted herself there like a barricade of iron and bone.

The first Beastman lunged through the splintered threshold, a towering boar-like creature, a bone axe raised high. Sable’s body moved before thought, one knife snapped from her fingers in a perfect arc, burying itself to the hilt in the creature’s eye. It dropped with a choking grunt, its weight slamming into the second Beastman behind it and slowing their surge.

Good. One at a time.

The next came barrelling through with a roar, slashing with claws like hooked sickles. Sable met it with a low, then thrust her hand forward. The air obeyed, and a concentrated blast hit the creature square in the chest sending it crashing back down the stairs into its own allies.

Another leapt over the fallen bodies, jaws snapping. Sable stepped into the attack, turning her hips, and drove a dagger into the underside of its jaw, wrenching upward until hot blood spilled down her arm. She shoved the corpse aside, boots braced against the rising rush of bodies below.

A thrown spear hurled from the crowd below whistled up toward her. She flicked her wrist, the air thickened around her, catching it. The spear hung suspended for a heartbeat before she sent it whipping back toward the one who'd thrown it, followed by a strangled yelp.

One Beastman, smaller and faster, managed to slip past her guard. It lunged toward Yavanna, claws outstretched.

Sable didn’t even look. Her fingers curled as though grasping an invisible throat and the creature staggered, choking on empty air. She pulled its breath from its lungs and it collapsed, convulsing silently, as Sable slit another Beastman’s throat without missing a beat.

Blood slicked the stones. Smoke thickened. The warband kept coming. The bodies kept piling up.

Sable stood, knives dripping, eyes sharp and cold with the efficient focus of someone who had lived too many battles to fear another.

 

[Yavanna]

The one who slipped past the dreadlord's guard fell dead, gasping for air that simply would not enter its lungs.

What a clever little trick this dreadlord had, but it seemed that might be her only spell. Yavanna had heard this about dreadlords. They only focused on a single ability in magic, or perhaps only gifted the one. It was not clear. They were exceptionally powerful with that ability, training it to be used in ways that would put most spellcasters to shame.

But they lacked versatility and subtlety. Just brutes swinging around magic like a hammer.

Yavanna's lips twisted with disgust, even though it seemed likely she was about to be eaten. What a waste of talent. What a waste of centuries.

She would not die this way.

The sorceress fell to her knees beside one of the corpses of the slaughtered beastmen stacking up around the dreadlord. Hurriedly, she grabbed hold of a dagger in the corpse's belt sash and drug it free. Hardly more than a shard of bone wrapped in leather, but better than her bare hands.

Her chest rose and fell as her breathing quickened with the growing tide of anxiety.

What could she do? What should she do?

Yavanna's fingers tightened around the hilt of the dagger. If she stabbed the dreadlord now, they would both die. That would be foolish. If she did nothing, they might die anyway. Yavanna was not about to try to rush in and stab one of the beastman. They were absurdly huge.

No.

If it looked like they were going to overwhelm the dark haired bitch, she would just slit her own throat and avoid whatever other fate they had planned.

Sable

 

[Sable]

The beastmen were relentless.

Blood slicked the floor around her boots, bodies piled up at the door, and Sable was forced back. Every time she cut one down, two more surged forward, snarling, flanking, pressing her back step by grinding step. Her knives flashed silver arcs through the smoke, each throw burying itself in a throat, an eye, a lung. Air snapped around her as she bent it to her will, blasting hulking bodies off their feet, wrenching breath from lungs, batting aside thrown axes and jagged arrows.

But she couldn’t stop everything.

She saw the spear hurtling toward the elf and flicked her fingers sharply, air hardened in front of it, knocking its path aside.

In that same heartbeat, an arrow struck her.

The impact hit like a hammer blow, punching through flesh and sticking there. She staggered, grit her teeth, swallowed the cry that still escaped her lips. Her hand shot down, fingers closing around the haft of a fallen spear. In one fluid movement she hurled it, a clean, brutal line through the smoke. It punched through the beastman’s face with a wet crunch.

“Cunt.” she spat, and hissed as she snapped the arrow's shaft protruding from her shoulder.

She barely drew her next breath before a bear-sized mass of fur and muscle crashed into her. She managed half a step of bracing before she was slammed back into the stone wall. Her skull rang, her spine jarred.

Then an axe haft drove across her throat, pinning her there. Her boots scraped helplessly on the floor as the creature leaned in, putting its entire bulk into crushing the air from her windpipe. Her vision blurred at the edges, darkening.

Sable’s hand shot out instinctively, fingers curling in the air itself. She seized the beastman’s breath and it choked, eyes flaring wide as she pulled the air from its lungs, locking its chest in mid heave. But it did not loosen its grip. If anything, its desperation to kill her sharpened. It forced the pole harder into her throat, lifting her clean off the ground.

Bright, stinging panic clawed at her ribs. Her feet kicked uselessly against it as her free hand slapped frantically along her hip, her thigh, her ribs to find nothing but blood and the useless sheaths that had once held more knives.

The beastman’s vision was going dim. Hers was too. And several more of their number filed into the chamber.

 

[Yavanna]

So much noise and blood filled the tower that Yavanna almost threw herself off the edge anyway to escape the butchery before her. Blood soaked the timber floor, body after body piled up around the Dreadlord.

She started to wonder if the woman really could defeat them by herself when an arrow struck the dreadlord and another beastman pinned her against the wall with an ax haft.

Amber eyes cold with hate, Yavanna only had to look between the two locked in a struggle and the others trying to make their way up the stairs to come to a decision. She took up the bone dagger in her good hand and darted forward, bending down to slam the dagger into the unprotected back of the beast man’s leg. Sharpened bone parted fur and flesh with surprising ease, sinking deep into the meat until Yavanna felt hot blood slick her fingers.

Disgusted, she wrenched the dagger back only to see the half-strangled beast whirl on her, taking one hand off the ax haft to slap her in a backhand of such force and violence that she went flying back across the room.

Her back hit the wall and she crumpled into a ball on the floor, pain throbbing in her back and her shoulder. She didn’t move.

Sable

 

[Sable]

Just as Sable’s vision began to tunnel, black crowding in at the edges, air slammed back into her lungs. She hit the floor hard, choking on the sudden rush of it. Her gaze snapped up in time to see Yavanna fly across the chamber and crumple against the wall.

“Shit.”

Rage cut clean through the haze. Sable clenched her fist and ripped the last remnants of air from the beastman’s lungs. He dropped to his knees with a wet, choking sound before pitching forward, dead weight hitting the floor at her feet.

There was no time to think. She surged upright, snatching a fallen polearm as she moved. One sweeping, brutal arc and two throats opened in passing, blood spraying hot across her, but she didn't stop. Sable slid to her knees beside Yavanna’s limp body and hauled her against her chest, wrapping herself protectively around her.

Heavy footfalls thundered closer. Too many. Too close.

Sable drew in a deep breath, drawing the air toward her, and then let it go. The air around them detonated.

A violent shockwave ripped outward in all directions, a concussive roar that flattened everything in its path. Beastmen were hurled like broken dolls, bodies smashing into stone with sickening crunches. Weapons became missiles, spinning and tearing through flesh. The walls split and buckled under the force, stone rumbling as cracks raced through the tower’s spine.

The ground lurched violently. The tower swayed..

Sable tightened her grip on Yavanna, curling around her completely as the floor beneath them gave way. Stone and timber collapsed, the world falling apart in a deafening roar as they plunged together into the void, Sable’s body locked around the elf’s like a shield as everything around them caved in.

 

[Yavanna]

Consciousness came in and out. She should awake. She needed to. She knew she should.

Pain seared in Yavanna's left shoulder. Pounding drums rang in her head and she thought her skull might break open, or maybe it already was split open. Her back throbbed and ached and so did her stomach. And, oh spirits, her shoulder.

She wanted to go back to sleep. To fade away where the pain wouldn't reach her. But it clawed her back to consciousness and clarity crystallized her focus on the world as her eyes fluttered open.

Yavanna lay on the floor amid a pile of rubble. Dust rose everywhere, settled on everything, including the bare skin of her legs peeking out beneath an armored form crouched above her.

The dreadlord.

Yavanna swallowed, barely able to think through the pain.

The dreadlord saved her... why?

Oh. Her mission. Of course.

Yavanna's head slumped back and she saw behind them, in her inverted vision, the corpses of beastmen sticking up beneath the stones and timber. Some stirred, but just barely. The stupid beasts had all been crowded inside the tower when it came crashing down.

Reaching up with her right hand, Yavanna patted the thigh plate of the woman's armor.

"Good... job.... m-moron," she panted.

Sable

 

[Sable]

The world was still settling when Sable felt the pat against her thigh.

Her eyes were squeezed shut, jaw clenched so tight it ached, every muscle in her body locked as she held the cocoon of air around them rigid and unyielding. Stone and wood and beastmen thundered down, but none of it touched them. She took it all, braced over the elf like a shield made of flesh.

Moron..

One eye cracked open. Then the other. Grey met amber.

Sable’s gaze flicked over Yavanna with swift, ruthless efficiency, checking for wounds she hadn’t caused. Satisfied she wasn’t immediately dying, Sable finally lifted her head and scanned the ruin around them. Dust and smoke churned thick as fog. Broken stone jutted at violent angles. Beastmen bodies lay half buried beneath the collapse, some twitching weakly, others very still.

Only then did she let the air hardening around them ease.

The moment she did, exhaustion hit her like an anvil. Her shoulders shook. Her breath stuttered. It tore at her nerves and muscles alike, and she swayed as she pushed herself upright. She reached down, hauling Yavanna up with her by sheer stubborn strength before her legs had a chance to give out.

“You’re welcome,” Sable muttered hoarsely, voice rough as gravel. “We need to move.”

The shield collapsed fully. Dust rushed in, stinging her eyes, burning her throat. She coughed hard, once, twice, then clamped a hand around the elf’s arm and started moving, dragging her over rubble and bodies alike.

She scooped up the broken haft of a spear. Not ideal. Nothing about this was. She cast a sharp glance around the ruin, searching for movement, for breath, for anything still standing that might want them dead.

Her grip on Yavanna tightened; not gently, but firm. Possessive. Necessary. She pushed her toward the tree line as quickly as she could.

She was surely fucked. Her strength and power was waning, and she was out of weapons that she trusted, in the middle of the fucking Falwood.

Wonderful.

 

[Yavanna]

The chained and collared elf let out a groan as Sable jerked her to her feet and drug her toward the tree line. Tottering footsteps slipped as they moved out of the rubble and Yavanna let out a pained cry as her toe struck a huge chunk of stone, stubbing the digit.

Hobbling onward, Yavanna struggled to keep up with the dreadlord‘s unyielding pull, sure that if she fell the woman would just drag her through the grass until they reached, well, wherever it was the dreadlord thought she was taking them.

Aside from the obvious pain of the fucking knife wound in her shoulder, the sorceress could feel the ache of the other injuries across her body. But she did not know the ugly blue-black-and-yellow tint that now swathed a portion of her back and stomach in bruises. At least three, especially where the Beastman struck her. Back in her home, she would have waved a hand and done away with such an unsightly injury an instant. But the collar prevented her from accessing magic to heal herself of the bruises, let alone the stab wound still congealing in her left shoulder, right where it met her chest. Just under the bone. It was agony.

All of it.

Every step.

Just existing.

She might as well have thrown herself off the tower. Yavanna still couldn’t believe this. This was some nightmare a fae trapped her in. Two centuries of wonder and art laid low by some pathetic human who could only master a single element.

Yavanna whimpered.

Somehow, they made it to the tree line. The tall trees felt familiar overhead. Reassuring. But Yavanna was exhausted. Tired of running. Tired of being stabbed and thrown across rooms.

She just needed to lay down. Somewhere. Anywhere.

Her vision shimmered and she felt hot tears spilling down her cheeks.

Oh.

She thought she had run out of tears by now.

Sable

 

[Sable]

Sable didn’t slow when Yavanna stumbled. She felt it through the grip on the elf’s arm, the uneven weight, the way her steps began to falter, but slowing meant dying, and Sable had no room left in her for mercy that endangered her survival.

Her body screamed at her to stop. An arrow still jutted from her shoulder, every movement tugging fire through muscle and bone. Her hands shook, not fear, never fear, but the aftermath of power spent far past its safe limit. She stayed sharp by sheer refusal, by the old, ugly discipline that had kept her alive when better people had not been.

When the elf whimpered, Sable shot here a sideways look, eyes bloodshot and feral.

“Spare me the fucking tears,” she sneered.

The forest swallowed them quickly. The air cooled beneath the canopy, heavy with damp earth.. She carried on until up ahead, she spotted the dark shape of an ancient tree, dappled by moonlight. Its trunk was split and hollowed by time, a yawning mouth that would offer them some shelter. A river murmured nearby.

Sable hauled Yavanna the last few steps and shoved her forward without ceremony, forcing her down among the gnarled roots and into the sheltering hollow. It was cramped, too close and too dark, but it would do.

“Sit,” she snapped, breath ragged. “Don’t move unless you want everything out there to hear you.”

Only once the elf was inside did Sable stagger back a step, pressing her shoulder to the tree as she dragged in a shaking breath. Her vision swam at the edges. She clenched her jaw, refusin rest, grimacing as she started removing her pauldron. Blood soaked the tunic beneath her leathers.

She glanced once more toward the tree line they’d fled from, listening for pursuit, before turning back toward the hollow.

 

[Yavanna]

Half-delirious with pain, Yavanna could do nothing but suffer the humiliation of following the human's commands. She collapsed in the hollow of the tree, curling into a ball. Her skin under the manacles at her wrists and the collar at her neck felt chafed and raw. They would probably leave scars, to join with the wound in her shoulder.

Glancing down she saw the bare calf of her left leg, a swathe of her skin was mottled a sickly yellow and a blue so dark it was almost black. Yavanna choked back another sob.

Bit by bit this dreadlord would either kill her, or turn her into a disgusting, scarred ugly thing.

Shimmering amber eyes looked up to the human woman, who stood nearby, removing part of her armor. Yavanna focused rubbing away the tears and saw a patch of glistening scarlet smeared across the leathers and tunic of the human.

"I hope their arrows weren't poisoned," Yavanna muttered darkly.

Sable

 

[Sable]

Sable snorted, the sound humourless. “Oh, I’m certain it was,” she shot back, lips pulling into a tight, mirthless smile that never touched her eyes. “Lucky for you, I’m tolerant to most poisons.”

The heat in her shoulder was no longer sharp, it had spread, a deep, throbbing burn that pulsed with her heartbeat. Beastmen favoured filth and rot on their arrowheads. Savages, not unlike the elves in that regard. She unfastened the last piece of armour with stiff fingers and let it drop, breath hitching as the movement jostled the shaft still embedded in her shoulder. Blood slicked the broken wood. She tried to get a grip on it, teeth gritting as she tugged.

She hissed, the world tilting as dizziness washed over her. Bone. Lodged fast. Not something she could muscle through, not now. A cold sweat broke across her skin, dampening her hairline and spine.

With a low curse, she abandoned the attempt and stepped into the hollow, ducking beneath the roots. She lowered herself at the entrance and sat heavily, one knee drawn up, her body blocking the opening and penning the elf in, shielding her at the same time.

Her grey eyes swept over Yavanna despite herself; the scrapes and bruises, the bandaged shoulder. Alive. Hurting, but alive. She leaned her head back against the bark, eyes half lidding as she forced her breathing to steady. Just a moment. Just enough to keep from blacking out.

“Get some rest,” she said at last, voice rough but quieter now. An order, yes, but not an unkind one. After that, she’d have to decide how the hell they were getting out of this forest alive.

 

[Yavanna]

Get some rest?

In this hollowed out tree? Like she was some sort of tribal savage?

Yavanna's lips curled, but she made no reply, too exhausted. She made a pillow of her hands and closed her eyes, confident at least that the dreadlord wouldn't try to kill her as she slept. Too tired to try to plan an escape, or make an attempt on the human's life in the night.

Besides, with Yavanna's current luck she'd succeed only to encounter more beastmen and be eaten alive.

She shivered. The air was cold against her skin. Normally her spells provided her with the perfect climate, no matter the weather. But the human deprived her of this comfort. Along with her bed and her pillows and her silk sheets.

Yavanna's body shook, teeth chattering.

Gods above and below, could she not just sleep?

Sable

 

[Sable]

The sound of it that relentless chattering of teeth scraped against what little patience she had left. Sable’s jaw tightened, her vision swimming as exhaustion clawed harder, heavier, demanding she give in. Her shoulder burned like it had been packed with coals. Every heartbeat thudded through her skull.

“Gods,” she muttered, and without bothering to announce it, she shifted. Armor creaked softly as she lowered herself into the hollow, the roots biting into her back. She reached out, hauling her in with one firm pull so the sorceress’s back was pressed against her chest.

An arm locked around Yavanna’s middle, possessive and secure, not gentle, but not cruel either. Close enough that Sable could feel the tremor running through her, close enough that feverish warmth bled from her body into the elf’s cold skin.

She adjusted just enough to pin the elf securely, her chin resting briefly against tangled hair, senses stretched thin. If Yavanna so much as twitched, Sable would wake, so long as her exhaustion didn't drag her too deep.

Her breathing slowed despite herself, uneven at first, then steadier, heat pooling between them.

“Sleep,” she ordered softly, and gods help her, she let her eyes finally close.

 

[Yavanna]

The hand wrapped around her made Yavanna want to cry out in protest. A spike of anger and fear jolted through her. Then the warmth of the human's body pressed against her flowed over her and Yavanna's protests died in her throat.

Too tired to put up another fight, or hurl another insult.

Her breathing steadied, the chattering stilled, but as she took in a lungful of the forest air and smelled the wood rot and the decaying leaves and the reassuring earthy scents of the Falwood, she also smelled another scent. Pleasant, almost like stone after rain. Then she realized where it came from and her brows tightened.

Cursed human.

Yavanna finally fell asleep some moments later. And dreamed of petrichor and dark hair.

Sable

 

[Sable]

Slowly, inevitably, exhaustion won.

Sable’s grip tightened without conscious thought. Whatever poison still threaded through her blood left her fever-warm, heat radiating off her in waves. She shifted, seeking relief, and pressed her flushed cheek against the cool skin of the elf’s uninjured shoulder. The contrast drew a low breath from her chest, something between a sigh and a groan.

Her breathing slowed. Too even. Too deep.

She should not have slept like this, should not have allowed herself to sink so far, but the forest held them, and her body simply gave in.

The dream came hard and fast. Heat. Motion. Skin. Sable's fingers curled against the soft skin of Yavanna's stomach. Her breath brushed an ear, a woman's name slipping deliriously from her lips, shaped by fever.

Her brow knit faintly even in sleep. And still she did not wake.