Private Tales The wrong place

[Baise]

Valthar very nearly changed his entire plan in that moment. Mara was terrified of these people but he hadn't taken the time to decide if that was rational or not. She seemed a very simple girl. One of them men that worked the docks was like that. He could do his work but talking to him was just like talking to a child.

"Come on," he said, offering a hand. "Be ready to run."

Valthar led her back across the chamber as quietly as he could. There were voices almost right outside the door. Decision time was coming. They would open the door and if they saw the pair of them it was negotiate or flee. If Mara was acting rationally and they were after a beast then maybe they would be allowed to leave.

The chance of them being unreasonable seemed small, but the outcome of that risk being realised would be dire. He couldn't get past all of them on his own. Not unless the mainlanders were even worse fighters than described in the most outlandish Norden campfire tale.

This wasn't the place where he wanted to die. A place of darkness and blood and pain.

With his left hand he gently urged Mara to stand as close to the wall as possible. Then he took the sword up with two hands and raised it high. If they were being quick they might only swing the door open and cast a glance around before moving on.

They did not open the door carefully.

Kicked off its hinges the slab of wood went sliding across the floor. A lamp was thrust into the darkness.

Valthar brought the blade down with all his strength. The lamp went crashing down to the ground, along with the hand that hand been holding it. The glass cracked apart sending flames spreading across the ground.

A young man screamed, but Valthar shoved him aside. The man beside him was wearing heavy armour and started to turn to face Valthar. There wasn't enough room in the doorway and Valthar simply slammed his shoulder into him. Two out of the way but there were more in the corridor.

"Run!" he hissed at Mara as he fled the room.

 

[Maranae]

She took his hand hesitantly, waiting for the pain that she had been secretly dread and expecting to come. When it didn't, she felt a moment of confusion that was quickly buried by the need to act, to move. He pulled her along a sight more gently than she had him. Back towards the door, back towards the men with their hard skins and sharp instruments. She didn't want to get near those men with their sharp instruments, for they had hurt her before. They, and the others in this place.

Pressed against the wall, she could almost hear the heartbeat of the men on the other side, could feel the pounding in Valthar's chest and could taste the scent of unease bordering on fear that washed off of the man in waves. It triggered something within her, something dark and dangerous and feral and absolutely terrifying to the girl with the wide eyes and sweet, if naive, disposition. The Beast was there, coiled in the pit of her soul and watching her with unblinking eyes.

Waiting.

A moment in time, breath held as the world stood still. Every mote of dust in the air seemed to gleam to her eyes, moving with the speed of a grain of sand through molasses. She stood as tense as a spring, not entirely sure what was expected of her but absolutely ready to pursue that goal with all of her might. And she didn't have long to wait.

The door burst open, splinters of wood flying through the air. The lantern light was enough to temporarily blind the girl, so accustomed low light had she become. The shocked shriek of pain cut through to her soul, triggering that thing deep within, making it stir and slither about in agitation.

"Run!"

Her legs obeyed that command without conscious thought. Valthar darted through the door, a strangled shout of alarm issuing from the throat not screaming about their severed limb just as soon as he cleared the door jamb. She darted through the doorway as well, lithe form the very definition of power and grace. On the other side, the warrior in the heavy armor, shocked into inaction for a moment, blink and then swung the sword in his hand at her almost out of reflex. Certainly not by any design. She felt a distant sting, a sharp tug somewhere down in her lower body. Pain. There was pain there, and her eyes leaked tears as she felt liquid heat flow down her flank, staining the already heavily stained shirt and soaking into her trousers.

Despite the blow, an flung hand struck the armor soldier with enough force to make him lose his balance and, overbalanced, he toppled backwards. Somewhere ahead, light blossomed as someone stepped out of a room down the passage leading to the Master's chamber. A yell of alarm rang through the complex, but Mara just followed the man called Valthar, blood streaming down her side where the sword of the other had cut into hip.

 

[Baise]

The woman ahead of Valthar in the cloak turned to run. He rudely shoved her to the ground and ran right over her. They had to beat the rest of the group back to the intersection and run for the surface. There was no looking back; he could hear Mara running behind him.

The woman who had been shoved into the gore and trampled over cried out another warning. Someone down the far end of the corridor, directly ahead of Valthar, answered. He didn't even hear what they said. He simply saw the turning, saw that they were close enough to make it before the other soldiers with spears.

He slapped his hand to the wall to slow his run, nearly slipping in on dried blood as he turned sharply.

"Keep running!" he called back. His blood was coursing through his veins, pulse drowning out the cried behind him. They were halfway up with a silhouette appeared against the bright sky ahead.

"Fuck."

 

[Maranae]

He held the lantern as his companion stepped into the corridor, the screams of the wounded echoing within this dark graveyard of a facility. The escort he had with him, a man wearing chain over leather, ran into the passageway, and from the lower level he could hear the others running, their heavy footfalls echoing eerily.

A large shape was running through the passage ahead, and he only wished it would be safe to throw his bow up, to draw and fire on whatever it was. The gleam of steel in its hand was enough to make the researcher want to wet himself, and it was with a heavy sigh of relief when he saw the brute hit the wall and pivot, heading upwards towards daylight. A smaller shape, if taller, followed close, flowing like a feline as it went. He would recognize that creature anywhere, and his flesh went pale white.

"Th-there! Its still in here!" His cry echoed, and whether the people at the entrance had heard or not, he couldn't tell. But it was down here, with them, and they had a chance to contain it.

Down here.

Where he was at. He suddenly felt very sick.

--

The scream forced everyone to jerk upright. The sun was on its way to the horizon, but brilliant light with the apparent consistency of molasses shone brightly down the passage.

"What the fuck was that," one of the heavily armored men queried, drawing the short sword at his waist and moving towards the entrance. He let loose a stream of explicit curses, before hollering at the rest of them. "Goddamn if it isn't down there. To arms, to arms!"

The others took up station beside him, weapons drawn. The lighter armored among them passed the spears over, as they would have a lot more weight to stand against the charge, while the lighter armored men took station to the side, weapons at the ready. They could see a beast of a man coming from below...and a woman, with red hair.

"That's not a woman, don't be tricked by it," one of the researchers hissed. She draw the bow she carried to ful ldraw, and loosed an arrow down the passage, heedless of whoever was behind them.

"Don't, we have people down there," the heavy armored one snapped at her, but she was already drawing another arrow and knocking it. Wasn't the time to be arguing, though. They outnumbered the pair coming up the hallway, but if the creature was as terrifying as the evidence below them suggested...

"Stop! Get away from that thing! Its a dangerous monster! Stop!" he yelled, hoping that he could prevent any further bloodshed. The only thing that needed to die was the beast.

 

[Baise]

There was another group of soldiers outside of the entrance. Valthar heard them echo the cry that came from below. The sight of a man drawing his sword was enough enough to see against the light.

They were calling out, telling Mara to get away from him. Had they seen him transform back from a Svalen? In all the confusion he might not have picked up their scent if they had been downwind.

There was a hiss, the kiss of wind against his cheek. One of them was loosing arrows down the corridor. He had no shield and no armour. Nowhere to take cover.

Valthar didn't stop running. He pressed as close to the wall as he could, squinting against the light. There was no avoiding the next arrow. He was in front of Mara, just metres away from the archer emerging into the light. His sword fell to the ground, he cried out as she released the string.

His cry dropped several octaves. The defiant shout turned into a growl that seemed to shake the ground. There was a thud as the arrow struck home, embedded into the mass of fur and muscle that was bearing down on the archer. The Svalen didn't stop. The snap of the bow cracking under his weight was followed by bones being crushed as the archer vanished beneath him.

 

[Maranae]

A punch, a stab of pain, but whatever it was passed clean through her flesh. Mara did not even cry out as the arrow tore through muscle and passed through cartilage, missing anything vital by sheer luck. Hot blood poured down her chest, staining the tunic she wore dark and adding to the flow from the slice in her hip. She whimpered at the sting, for this was more than a blade through flesh. But she kept on. Valthar had told her to follow, and so she did.

She watched as the man-who-is-Valthar became something else, became a beast. And an enraged one at that. That shifting seemed to pull at her in an odd way, a resonance with some part of her soul that shared in the Svalen and everything that it was. But she knew a little of this thing, and it terrified her more than the bad ones that were coming to take her again. It was the beast without cease, the one that would carve a swathe through all of them, and then continue to rampage until spent.

The beast coiled around her soul, assuming she even had such a thing.

The heavily armor man leapt back, and then took the spear in hand and drove it at the bear. "What the fuck are one of you doing here?" he exclaimed even as the other robed figure dropped back, shock writ large on his face. Clearly the warrior knew what he was dealing with, and was not the least bit happy about it.

"D-don't let the beast bite you," the researcher yelled, fumbling with his bow. The weapon was woefully inadequate for dealing with the heavily muscled mass of the bear before him.

"This isn't a goddamned beast, its a Svalen. Never seen one this far south," the warrior snapped, dancing back from any attack that might be leveled at him. The man was more than competent in his fighting, and would not go down with a good fight. he just needed to buy time.

"Not talking about that," the researcher shouted as Mara cleared the passageway, came out into sunlight. He pointed a finger at the woman. "Talking about her. Bite is poison," he said, and then instead of shooting at the bear, took aim at Maranae.

Behind, the sound of many feet running up the passage. Valthar had taken care of two out of the twelve, but this was far from over.

 

[Baise]

A swipe intended to knock the bow aside sent the reseacher tumbling through the trees.

Valthar, as Svalen, let his head turn between those left standing on the surface. Glassy black eyes peered at them from over a maw that could easily encompass a man's head. His ears turned towards the tunnel. More of them were coming.

It would have taken a small army to stop his father in full flight, but as with all things fighting in this form took practise. In the late spring and summer the young warriors would practise against one another or groups of men with blunt sticks outside the village. Valthar had been in this form for mere minutes.

In the corner of his vision he saw the scarlet stains spreading out across Mara's clothes.

Valthar looked towards the soldier who had addressed him. He decided to answer his question.

"Leaving," the great bear boom. With a snarl and a swipe he put more space between them. Then he lowered his form closer to the earth.

"Get on," he told Mara.

 

[Maranae]

The researcher landed against a trunk with a sickening crunch, and fell to the forest floor, only just able to sit upright before fainting. The soldier snarled, but kept his distance. One on one, he had no chance against the Svalen, and there was still the monster he traveled with to consider.

"Stop!" The voice was from the other female researcher, puffing and panting as she came into the sun. "Stay away from that thing, Svalen! It is more dangerous than you know!"

Mara was already leaping onto Valthar's back, though, leaving smears of blood on his fur. She grimaced with pain, but the amount of blood and the wounds themselves should have been enough to incapacitate her. She cling to the muscular bear with strength nearly equal to his.

Soldiers piled out of the passage, one clutching an arm that ended in a stump. Bright steel gleamed. "Do not harm the Svalen unless he gets in the way. Destroy the creature!" This from the man who had waited for reinforcement.

They had to prevent it from escaping, and they would do it by any means necessary.

 

[Baise]

"No," said Valthar, through a mouth that didn't seem to have worked its way around words yet. Back low to the ground, the Svalen snarled and backed away. And entire row of guards started to spread out into a semi-circle ahead of him.

With no ceremony, Valthar turned and bounded away. He slowly only to smash through the tree and ropes that several horses had been tethered to. One of them kicked at him before the group scattered in fear.

He could feel the damp spread of her blood through his fur.

"If I follow their scent, I'll find a town," he reasoned out loud. From what he had seen Valthar wasnt even sure she would last that long. Yet he found himself surprised by the strength of her grip to his fur as he slowed into a rhythm.

 

[Maranae]

"Damn it, damn it, gods damn it all!" The warrior threw his spear to the ground, furious that their failure to contain the threat. No one had expected a Svalen out here, far from the northern reaches that were their home. It would be like finding a mermaid in a desert.

"Must...stop it," the man who had first been struck by the bear managed. Broken bones gleamed pink in the fading light of day, and his face was absolutely ashen pale. On deaths' doorstep. "Too dangerous," he managed with a gasp.

"More dangerous than the Svalen that took her?" The soldier looked upon the dying man without any pity. The man - all four of the researchers here - had played a dangerous game. Dozens had already died as a result of their meddling with magic's and alchemy. "There is no way..."

"Ye...ess," he said with a soft sigh, and collapsed into unconsciousness. The bow-wielding woman had picked herself up - abgash in her face bleeding heavily - and knelt beside that worthy. She laid a hand upon him, and shook her head.

The contract was for containment, and so far they had failed. The scent of smoke wafted on the air, and before long the passage leading into darkness was a roiling tunnel filled with white smoke. All the evidence of their meddling destroyed, the corpses of the slain blessedly incinerated by pyromancy that would cease once all had been consumed.

"We need to inform the others. They have two or three days of hard travel before they reach any village or town, assuming they can find their way." The man, visor raised, looked the way the bear and beast had charged off. "If that thing gets into the general public..."

There was no telling what would happen. It had been designed as a weapon, after all. A living weapon, a thing of power and grace, of resilience. It had not shown the faintest inclination to perform the tasks they had painfully trained it in...

Until one day. And then violence and madness had reigned.

--

The stride the Svalen set was almost soothing, lulling the red head on his back into a quasi trance-like state. She said nothing, only clung to his back and, as the trance-like state grew stronger, more consuming, her grip grew weaker.

The flow of blood had slowed after a couple miles of jostling action that should have prevented it. They had made a couple of miles when a brilliant light stabbed at the heavens, luminous fire in blue and white a splash in the sky. There was no sound, not at this distance anyway. Perhaps a signal to others?

After a while longer, the woman on his back slipped loose, her grip finally gone. She left a smear of clotted blood down his back before hitting the ground like a ragdoll, limbs akimbo as she rolled to a halt. She lay still, chest rising and falling, eyes looking into the middle distance.

Oddly, the wounds she had taken did not appear to be bleeding as much, now...

 

[Baise]

The bear swore in the tongue of his people as he came to a halt. Such a mass required more than a few strides to slow. Valthar turned around and dre himself up onto his hind legs.

With no pomp or Ceremony he slowly shrank back down to his human-shaped form. He still had his clothes because apparently that's how this works.

The arrowhead embedded in his chest was forced from the wound. His Svalen form with its thicker hide and mass of fat and muscle had stopped the arrow biting deeper. Now the head was gone, but it left blood seeping into his shirt.

"Mara?" he called out. Something a out that distant stare concerned him very much, but he couldn't decide what it was.

 

[Maranae]

Many eyes. All eyes seeing as one, a disjointed image as much a kaleidoscope of things seen as it could be.

A sea of sensations, of many minds connectedcas one and guided by a single hand, as a king leads an army. Except that was not right either, fir the armybwas comprised of individuals, with individual will. The poor souls snared in this web had no choice but to obey.

Shrieks heard from many ears, many different angles. Many different places. Running legs, blood streaming from multiple bites, chunks of flesh torn free. Strips of meat dangling, drooling threads of blood.

Sharp pain, bright steel in black and white. A muzzle biting at the bright killer embedded in its flesh until tongue and mouth are gored, until the eyes fade, the body perishes. The soul wanders free.

Her eyes suddenly focused. Long minutes had gone by, her vacant state seemingly endless, but now that she had come around, she moaned low in her throat, and began to cry, softly weeping.

"Mara hurts," she said. "Hurts. It hurts, Mara hurts, hurts, hurts," she repeated, curling into a ball. The wound in her hip wept a little more blood, but seemed to be mending itself before his eyes. Where the arrow had punched through...

Blood oozed from the spot, but it seemed like it was already trying to close itself. It looked like what you would expect such an injury to look like after Four or five days, not an hour or so.

Whatever the state of those wounds, and however she had ignored them before, it was clear that they painted the girl greatly now, great tears rolling down her cheeks as she rocked, repeating herself over and over.

 

[Baise]

Valthar dropped to his knees heavily before Mara. He had his left hand pressed heavity against the wound in his chest, trying to stem the flow of blood.

His eyes went wide when he saw the scale of her wounds and how quickly they were closing. His breathing became more rapid. Valthar focused on trying to keep it even. His wounds weren't life threatening. He had seen powerful men go into shock, suddenly lose all colour and start to spasm at serious wounds.

The norden place his right hand across Mara's shoulder.

"I know, I know it hurts. You're healing. We got free." As reassurances went it was fairly weak, but he didn't have much head space left after holding back his own pain.

 

[Maranae]

The injuries burned like fire, as if someone had poured molten steel into her flesh. Fiery heat warred with boneshattering cold, a paradoxical set of sensation that twisted the mind. Or would have, except the the woman - girl, really, whatever her body looked like - yet lacked complexity of the mind to twist.

She loosed her legs and writhed on the ground like a small child, whimpering and moaning as the pain grew ever more intense. The Norden's touch, careful to avoid the still bleeding hole in her other shoulder, was gentle and reassuring. It did not seem to matter how weak the offered solace was, either; she quieted almost immediately except for the occasional whimper. Muscles still spasmed under the Norden's hand, writhing like snakes.

And then she clung to that hand, most of the amazing strength of her previous grip more or less intact. She looked up at Valthar with red-rimmed eyes, cheeks still wet from tears.

"Are the b-bad men gone," she asked tremulously, a slight hitch in her voice. She still groaned at the intense pain in her cut and puncture, but seemed otherwise lucid.

--

If the ones that had gone to the actual facility were professional mercenaries, and the others researchers of the subject they sought, then Talon represented a man with an appreciation for deadly prey. The man was a certified hunter of monster and man; to him, there was literally little difference between them beyond shape.

He looked up from the ground he was kneeling over, reading days old tracks pressed into the rich soil. The flare of magic served as a predetermined warning: they had found the beast and lost it. Talon was honestly not surprised by this turn of events. The others were good for escorts if caravans and people of interest, but they were all milk-fes city folk that did not have enough trail craft between them to track an elephant through a marsh.

Armor and numbers were good and all, but sometimes skill and experience superseded both.

Standing, he brushed off his hand, and calmly walked to his horse. The animal was battle trained, and its reins hung loose. It would not move until they were picked up again, and only if he touched them; otherwise, someone was apt to get steel-shod hooves to the face if they did not end up horse-bit instead.

As he picked up the reins, the warhorse whickering softly as he mounted up, he thought back to what his employer had told him. That information had not been passed along to the others, though the researchers themselves might say something.

If they survived.

He had hunted vampires and lycanthropes, had hunted demons and elder beasts. Crime lords and their crews, bandits, magical beasts. In all his life, he had faced many extremely dangerous quarry and he still lived.

His contract had cost a lot of money. He just hoped he lived to spend it. Not for the first time, he wondered at the why of it all. Why had they made this thing?

He had a pretty good idea. It stank of Vel Anir and its expansionist rhetoric, and fit neatly into things he could see them doing.

"Time to track down another one, Wintermist," he said, then kocked the horse into a canter towards the signal.

 

[Baise]

Valthar might have winced at the strength of her grip, but it was a dull ache compared the pain across his chest. He kept one palm hard to the wound. It was a clean cut, not too deep. It needed stitching but that wasn't likely to happen. Already there was pus seeping from the wound. It was going to heal badly, assuming he didn't die of disease.

By contrast her wounds were healing before his eyes. He might have struggled to believe what he was watching, but it had been a very interesting few days. A witch from the tundra had healed him with a touch before he was assailed by even more demons.

"The bad people are behind us for now," Valthar said. He lifted his head and looked back through the damage he had done to the undergrowth in his Svalen form. He had given them a good head start but it wouldn't be difficult to follow them. He had also lost the scent of their trail.

 

[Maranae]

She, too, looked back at the path they had traveled with her teary, tired eyes. The pain was lessening, although the injuries she had received were still leaking blood. The damage had been greatly mitigated, though she of course seemed not to understand the magnitude of that healing, nor that it was uncommon.

In fact, she looked upon his own wound, saw crimson running and shuddered. "Valthar is leaking red water," she observed. The scent of corruption made her nose wrinkle, though.

She released his hand, and uncurled from her ball of pain, standing up with only a slight hunching over from the sword-cut to her hip. That wound seemed nearly fully healed, angry red scar tissue bright through the rent in her clothes. She sniffed at the air, trying to ignore the scent of blood in the air. It made her hungry, and for the first time she noted that she was not only just hungry, but very hungry. As if the realization clued the rest of her body in to the fact, her stomach grumbled audibly.

"Mara is hungry," she said, looking back to Valthar. "Four-legs do not go near the people places. Mara must hunt four-legs for food." She maintained her gaze on Valthar, eyes bright. "Is Valthar hungry too?" The hunger she felt drove any thought of the people who might be pursuing them right from her head. Or perhaps she just did not think or know that they would pursue. It was difficult to say.

 

[Baise]

Despite the pain, being free from that hellish place gave Valthar a moment to reflect on the woman before him. She was stunningly beautiful with her flame red hair and wide eyes. Yet she had the mannerisms of a child. She was clearly simple in the head like dear old Djorickson had been.

Her strength was far beyond a slip of a woman her size. The ability to heal wounds like that was something he hadn't seen. He hadn't seen that without someone casting a spell, at least.

"This is blood," he told Mara. He let his hand come away from the wound, his fingers painted scarlet. It wasn't bleeding as profusely any more, but it was going to be an ugly scar if it wasn't stitched. He wiped his hand on the grass.

"What do you...oh. Four legs: animals? We should hunt," he agreed. Norden needed to consume a lot of meat in a day, especially if they were shifting. "But not right here," he insisted.

Valthar pointed back through the destruction his Svalen had caused. "If they regather their horses and come down here..." he turned around and pointed ahead, "they'll continue or look for our tracks here. We should go back and then turn off the trail I left."

With some room between them and any possible pursuit he could likely shift back again. Without a bow or spear he would be a far more effective hunter making a kill as svalen.

 

[Maranae]

Blood. She remembered being taught that, and something vague about it. The memory was dim, fleeting. She tried to grasp it in mental fingers, but it slipped away like sand.

Food. The need for it was rising like a tidal wave, increasingly insistent. Her stomach growled loudly, and she stood taller, sniffing at the air for all the world as if it was a natural activity. "Horses?" She asked, wearing a puzzled look on her face. "Hard-footed four-legs that people ride?" She did not wait for an answer though. "Mara does not like them. They are fast," she said.

She looked at him, not understanding what he was saying or getting at. The world was still a simple place for her, lacking nuance. All new, fresh. "Why go back? Bad people...Mara does not want to go back to the bad place," she said rather more firmly. "But Mara is hungry," she complained.

She looked to Valthar, like a child to a parent, looking for guidance with the same bright eyed, dim witted expression.

 

[Baise]

Valthar frowned. He did not deal with children very often. He took a few seconds considering how to explain in a way that she might actually comprehend.

"If they do get their horses back they will ride straight after us. And they will follow the trail I left. So we can't hunt here where they would find us.

"So to avoid the bad people we walk just a little way back and then go that way..." Valthar pointed orthogonally to the trail he had left.

"Also, quicker that we get moving the sooner we can hunt. Won't be able to light a fire though."

Valthar started back along the trail, looking for a good place to cut away in a different direction. Hopefully the 'bad men' were still trying to chase down their horses.

 

[Maranae]

She gave a whining groan at being denied food just yet - the hunger was increasing in voraciousness rapidly, almost as though the rapid healing of her wounds had drained her of something essential, and the body was demanding more than she had to offer. Depsite her unspoken complaint, she complied and fell in behind the Norden.

"Mara does not like fire," she murmured as she followed behind Valthar, the occasional complaint of hunger given voice by her guts that seemed to growl constantly now. The path that the Svalen had cut through the woods was as easy to read as a road map, if such things existed; a blind man could follow the torn earth and toppled saplings.

After a bit, Valthar cut off from the path at an oblique angle, heading much more carefully into the woods than he had previously. Maranae looked down the path in both directions and saw nothing, heard nothing - that was close anyway - and then ducked into the undergrowth, ragged clothes catching on twigs and other growing things as she did.

 

[Baise]

This wasn't his domain and Valthar certainly wasn't covering his tracks well. All he knew was that being at the end of the devastation he had caused would probably be a bad idea in a few hours. If tearing through some of them in his Svalen form hadn't deterred them, then he expected the soldiers to give chase eventually.

"You...havent been cooking your meat?" he asked. He supposed she could have cooked back at her abode. Though how anyone could have eaten a thing in that stench was beyond.

"If we could find a lake or a river I could fish," he said. It would take far too long to make a net but he could make a spear. Or try it as a Svalen.

"I haven't been able to shift into my Svalen - into a bear - for very long," he admitted. "There is a lot I need to learn still. I haven't got many tools for hunting."

 

[Maranae]

She made her way behind him with the Norden with her characteristic smile, though she did not speak as they made their way. Other than to occasionally complain about being hungry.

"Cook?" She sounded perplexed, as though she did not understand the term. She had been fed by the Bad People, but since she had...gotten free, she just ate what she could catch.

She shook her head at his words, still following behind him easily. "What is fish? Is it something Mara can eat?" It sounded like it was, and the prospect made her even more hungry.

She chortled softly at his desire to hunt. "There is no need. Mara can get food if Valthar cannot," she said happily. "Is Valthar hungry too? Mara is very hungry," she added. There was something decidedly...predatory about the last.

 

[Baise]

"Cook...yes..." he trailed off. When someone seemed to know so little it was hard to break down knowledge that was typically taken for granted.

"Fish live in water," he said. "I used to be a fisher. Spent my time catching fish for my village. And cooking means to..." he tried not to say cook.

"You put meat over a fire until he becomes soft and tender. Humans are supposed to cook their meat a lot," he said. Even Norden didn't tend to eat raw meat, though they preferred it on the rare side. Raw meat was not supposed to agree with human stomachs.

The monster has a poisonous bite...

Valthar hadn't really stopped to think about what Mara actually was. She was the one those soldiers had been after, not something else that had escaped one of those cages. She had healed those wounds with some kind of magic.

"Mara, what did the master do to you?" he asked as plainly as he could.

 

[Maranae]

A shudder rippled through the woman at the memories of her time spent in the Bad Place, as she had come to think of it. It was enough - barely - to mute the gnawing of her stomach on her spine, the increasingly undeniable requirement that she eat something. Being hurt, made to bleed as Valthar had called it always made her demandingly hungry.

"They said...words at Mara," she said, obviously having a difficult time describing even the simplest of things done to her. "Words that made Mara feel different. Sometimes words that hurt Mara a lot." Images of charred flesh, the stink of burned meat rank and sharp in the air. Pain. The sharp scent and unclean feel of magic was a distinct memory. She bared her teeth at the memory, her face an unrealized snarl, prominent incisors gleaming like the short fangs they were.

"Mara remembers fighting with tooth and claw against Bad Things. Master was angry because Mara did not fight well enough?" The animals that had been thrown at her, predators with teeth and claws filled with rage. She could remember the sterile room somewhere deep underground, an arena of the same kind used for cock fights or dog fights. The ground stained maroon from the blood of the fallen.

She was visibly shaking now, caught in the grip of a cascade of memories, of images. Cages and rooms as sterile as the people who handled her, treating her like an object and a particularly dangerous one at that. However they treated her, it was not like they would treat a person.

"Mara does not like Master or bad plsce," she said, her words strained. "And Mara is hungry," she added. Her mannerisms were subtly changing, body language clearly communicating predatory intent. She sniffed at the air, and stopped. "Hungry," she said in a low growl.

Every muscle taut.

 

[Baise]

Valthars's appetite slowly dimished as she spoke. Words of change. Magic. He looked carefully at Mara.

How long had they been working on her?

Valthar thought to ask, but he doubted he would get anything resembling a sensible answer out of here. If she had been locked down in the darkness she probably wouldn't even have had a way to mark the passage of time.

He started to imagine Mara as a much younger child being brought there for the first time. In his head he connected her voice to that small child. Maybe that really was what spoke to him: the core of who she had been before this started.

Animal instincts that belonged to his Svalen rose a warning. She must have picked up the scent of prey. He hadn't yet. Even though this place was unfamiliar to him, that fact was added to the growing body of evidence that told him she had been taken far, far away from humanity.

Valthar looked over one shoulder back towards their path.

"Go then, hunt," he told her. Morbid curiosity had him move out of her way, but not far.