A long story - chapter two Aneesh A myriad of weird little imps performing a really really annyoing and loud dance inside his head. Ontop of that, as if it were not enough, some mischevious wizard throwing fireworks at them, the sensation of brightness exacerbated to the point where it hurts his eyes and starts his head to spin. And, to complete the picture, an ant army crawling all over his body. Slowly, his eyes open, blinking at the brightness surrounding him. Cheerful green, a clear blue sky visible through the branches stretching upwards, chirping of birds in the distance. Blinking, he tries to raise himself, and notices something hindering him. His right arm has been carefully bandaged and tied to his upper body, wrapped all around in a scarf. He can see some sort of green leaves protruding from under the bandage, obscuring the wound from his view. “Well that seems to have helped”, he sighs with relief, remembering the details of his odissey to these woods. The whole upper body itself is bandaged and coated in the same sort of leaves underneath. Carefully not to rely on the right arm, he gets up, and looks around. “I don’t know how many ribs I broke, but it definitely still hurts”, grimacing as he straightens himself up. Right behind of where he was lying, in a small clearing, well, rather a small patch of forest that was razed by the creature, the girl is seated right next to the beast. “She lets it seem meek and sweet, in a weird way, that is, if a beast that size can look meek”, he thinks to himself, grinning, “and all this while she herself looks so fragile and delicate. I wonder how she can control that thing. Ummm…I hope she can control it, actually…”. Just as he finishes thinking that, the young girl turns her head up towards him and smiles, her face showing a strange mixture of concern, probably towards his state, and joy, probably, hopefully, due to his miraculous and fast recovery. He bows carefully, this time really paying a lot of attention to the battered ribs, and attempts for a formal introduction: “M’lady, you saved my life, and I will be forever in your debt…”. Her smile broadens, and he notices the creature, which had seemed asleep til now, raising an eyelid and glaring at him, a gust of air pushed through the nostrils of the huge head and whirling the leaves on the ground around. The full red lips of the girl part, revealing two rows of pearl-like small teeth, and letting go a laughter so relieved and happy, you might think they were not here stranded in the middle of nowhere. “Then again, maybe not everyone is stranded here, being chased around by wraiths for days at an end”, he reminds to himself.”Yshya thinks you’re funny! And that is a compliment, for sure! She usually doesn’t enjoy your kind, but I think she has somehow warmed up for you”, the girl replies, giggling. Getting up, she puts both hands on the hips, and stomps her foot, trying to look stern in a funny and at the same time cute, clueless kind of way, he thinks, while emanating that sort of caring maternal authority that would make her impose herself, she thinks. “That was quite a show you put up there, Mister! Don’t you ever dare do that to us again! Scare us and worry us! We worried about you! Three days and three nights have you been dreaming your feverish nightmares before the fever finally gave in. We were eventually starting to get worried about you, yes Sir, we really were!”. “I am terribly sorry, kind lady, I promise I’ll do my best to not let that happen again”. “Very good!”, she replies sharply, strutting out and generally trying to stand tall. It is only then that he notices she is actually at least ten, maybe fifteen inches shorter than him, her forehead barely reaching up to his chin, and, in spite of the troubles and the terror he has been through, in spite of the horrors he must have dreamt of for three nights, he feels relieved. Relieved and safe, in an unexplainable kind of way, protected and cared for by this little girl here, right in front him, by this little girl who really tries so hard to look impressive to him. And then, he bursts out in laughter, laughing so hard that his lungs beat wildly against the broken and bandaged ribs, so hard that it almost hurts him, but he doesn’t care, he is just feeling relieved and happy, for this is the moment he has been longing for so hard since he got lost. “This is the island sanctuary of serenity that every weary traveller must be looking for, and what is it made of? A girl, a huge beast and a forest clearing!”, he thinks, laughing gleefully. The girl eyes him sceptically, raising an eyebrow inquisitively, her ponytail wiggling around playfully. “What is there so funny about us being worried, mister?”, little feet stomping the ground. “I’m sorry milady, it is not you, it is just that the whole situation here seemed so strangely relieving, so cheerful, after all the dangers I have been through since arriving here. And I’m standing here, in this clearing, with you and your…umm…little friend, and I am just feeling calm and serene, this is unbelievable!”, and he continues to laugh. A moment of stupefaction later, the girl joins into his laughter. And together they continue to laugh, for minutes at an end, until the beating of his muscles against the bruised ribs becomes to much and he stubmles, falling down on his knees, panting. The girl stops, worried, and places her hand upon his arm, trying to to support him. Her grip is gentle, and yet very firm, he cannot help but wonder. “I am alright, m’lady, just a passing moment of weakness. My blessures, surely you can understand that?”. “I’ll show you blessures! Getting us worried again!”, she replies, smiling warmly. She helps him back to his feet, and guides him to the stump of a tree, where he can lay down for a bit and recover his strength. “Come to think of it, you did pretty well standing up right for so long, considering the condition you were in when I found you”, she says, grinning sheepishly. “But Aneesh is not going to let anyone die, not even a haggard would-be hero she meets in the woods, nono!”, she adds, joking. “Aneesh? Is that the blessed name of the wonderful lady that saved me?”, he asks. “That would be Shoryrsean Aneeshava Yshenes, if you care for the protocol, but I guess Aneesh will do for now”, she replies, nodding and laughing. “Most enchanted to make your acquaintance, lady Aneesh. Please forgive me my manners, as I gladly would stand and bow, but my frail and…haggard…state hinders me to do so…as for my name, well please call me…”, he pauses for a brief moment,”…Navarre”. He had been known by another name once, but, for whatever reason, he felt like it would be more appropriate to use another name for the time being. He could not name the reason, it was more of a general feeling of anxiety that settled in all of a sudden, yet its presence was strong enough to let him hide his identity, for now… “And I am glad to meet you too, ‘Navarre’”, she replied, curtseying and smiling, but he could not help but ponder whether there was irony or suspicion hidden in the way she had stretched the pronunciation of ‘his’ name. “What dealings exactly have brought you to my forest?”, she asks, looking him straight in the eyes. “I wish I could tell that, m’lady, but I fear I cannot give a satisfactory answer. All that I can remember is that, more than a week ago, I was out, hunting with my friends in the northern woods…we passed by a strange cave that I had not noticed before in our expeditions there, and I stopped by to examine it briefly, while my companions kept heading onward…then I have troubles remembering what happened exactly, although I do remember a bright flash of light, then I remember being surrounded by darkness…and as my eyes had grown accustomed to light again, I remember myself in a dark and eerie forest, all of a sudden surrounded by tall and dark figures with glowing green eyes, probably wraiths of some kind…they chased me through the woods for more than three days and three nights, until I finally came to the waterfall further up from here, and in the turmoil of the battle with them fell down into the pond. When I woke up from the fall, I had the privilege and honor to met you”, he concluded, waving his hand in the motion he would have used for a formal bow. “Mm-hmm”, she nodded in reply, “I see”. She stands up, and heads to the creature still laying flat on its belly in the clearing. “Did you hear that, Yshya? They are out again, hunting. More than a thousand moons have passed since they have last been out in so high numbers. And all of that for hunting a single lost warrior out…Hmm”, she turns around, staring at him until he starts to feel uncomfortable, “there is something about you that is different somehow, and I cannot grasp it yet, but it certainly is there. Three hundred moons ago we refreshed all the rituals and there was no sign of it weakening…this does not bode well at all. We will have to set out and warn the elders about this. And you will have to come with me and speak to them. Fleeing from them for so long is remarkable, and there is this other…thing…about you that is intriguing me”, she pauses, and adds, joking, “You wouldn’t stand a chance out here without me anyway”. Yshya. Having said that, the girl turns towards the mysterious creature. For the first time actually, he stops to examine it…her…closer. It ressembles most likely to the lizards of his homelands. With a couple more or less important differences. Firstly, this one here is, as he didn’t fail to mention already, huge. From the tip of its tail to the smoke emitting nostrils at least 20 feet, he would say. From its back, placed folded alongside its belly, a pair of huge skinned wings stretch out. “15 feet at least, if it were to try to use them…I wonder if the gust would simply blow me away or crush me outright”, he ponders. Secondly, its body is covered entirely in black, softly shimmering scales. Now if he would have been able to accept the bodily shape as being vaguely familiar, the color of the beast is utterly stunning. “Stunningly beautiful actually, to say the truth.”, he tells to himself, “were she not so big that I would be afraid not to be mistaken for some sort of insect, I’d really be totally transfixed”. From its head, two horns protrude, one on each side, and a thirn one is situated right in the middle of the forehead. The yellow, cat-like eyes that watch him seem highly intelligent and at the same time so cold-blooded that it sends shivers down his spine whenever their glare passed over him. The teeth in the mouth, as far as he can see, are of a pale yellow tone, and, first and foremost…huge and sharp. “I don’t want to know what those are for!”, he mutters, talking to himself in the way that the ones lost in their own thoughts usually do, just to be struck by an amused, for lack of a better word, look from the pair of piercing eyes in the black skull. “Yshya?”, he says, trying to catch the girls attention, “is that its name?”. “’Her’ name!”, the girl replies reproachfully. “Oh, pardon me, my mistake, m’lady…but what exactly is ‘she’?”.”Yshya is one of the last of her kind, a black wyrm, the rarest of all wyrms. Once there were many like her, and they lived in peace and harmony with our people. Yet, one day, an evil man found a way to cloud their spirits, and gain control over their minds, and tried to use that to his own benefits. A terrible tragedy occurred, and they fought among themselves and slew each other, not knowing what they were doing. Very few survived. Yshya was very young back then, and she got very hurt. She barely escaped from the mountains, where her kind lived, with her own life. By the time she reached our town, she was bleeding to death. My mother found her and cured her, for my mother was a woman very skilled in the arts of healing. She grew up alongside me, and, in the beginning out of gratitude for what my mother did, then out of friendship, she stayed with us. She has become my companion, and together we have adventured far and wide. I couldn’t imagine anyone suited better to watch my back, wherever we would go”, she concluded with a smile, gently stroking the creatures head, who, in return, in a touching display of love, gently nuzzled her beak in her flank. “Yshya is, or so my people say, my personal spirit guide in this world. A being of legend who has bound herself to my destiny. High talk of men with too much time at their disposal, if you ask me”, she smiled, “to me she is just my friend”. There was a lot he would have liked to ask her about the wyrm. The whole symbiosis he was witnessing here was something totally new for him. He had trained a few pet animals in his life, owned a few horses, most of the stuff ordinary people get to see, and not only was the sheer aspect of the wyrm so impressive, it was also the fact that it seemed so “human” in the way it had formed friendship and loyalty, and that coupled with its high intelligence, that made them so unique. “For the sake of the record though, I’d have to say that Aneesh is just as fascinating as the wyrm”, he concluded his thoughts, deciding to postpone the many questions he had for a later time. “Milady, those wraiths that chased me, how come they did not come after us all this time? They must have seen where I fell down the waterfall, and it must have been an easy deed to pick up my trail again…and especially Yshya’s trail, if you know what I mean”, he asked. “Honestly, I do not know”, Aneesh replied, “I haven’t seen a single one of them yet over the past days. Even though I doubt they are of the real wraith kind. A wraith like the one that legends tell us of would have slashed right through all your armor and ribs, and touched your heart with its icy grasp, leaving you there dead. It would not have broke your ribs. Maybe some sort of revenants, appartitions, something like that. Almost for sure no wraith. The one thing that troubles me though is that your description actually only fits wraiths…but you shouldn’t have survived a single hit from them, let aside two or more of them…”, she shook her head in disbelief. “Better she does not know yet. I’ll tell her once I am positive I can trust her”, he thought, in silent reply, hoping that he would not show any perceivable sign of the thoughts crossing his mind. Her question, and his sudden disintrest in contributing to the conversation leave them both suspended in a moment of awkward silence. “But anyway, I’ll bring you to to my people, I’m sure they can help us with your story. I want to check out a few other things first though”, she says. “The herbs have helped a lot with your wounds…and…there is something about your body that seems to have accelerated the healing process. By the time I found you, I would have assumed the wounds to have been severe, but already closing and the broken bones healing. For a few weeks at least, no way I could have told they were just a couple of days old”. “I can only tell they did hurt a lot!”, he replies, shrugging and smiling. “If your healing continues this fast, we’ll be ready to go in a couple of days at most”. They spent the next day talking and getting to know each other. She did not cease to amaze Navarre. Her people, she told him, were old, old behind whatever his mind could conceive. Their society was built and heavily relying upon magic, and they had mastered arcane arts that were leaving him struck with awe. They were able to talk with the spirits of the air and earth, and demons of strength unheard were doing their bidding. Magic was the way of their lives just in the way that the bow and sword had been his. He had known mages in his old homelands, powerful mages even, but no one of those was coming even close to what Aneesh was telling him. He witnessed her creating food and water to sustain them out of thin air, and he witnessed the giant wyrm outstretch its wings and fly a few rounds above their heads, keeping an eye out for the wraiths or other enemies. He learned about cities high up in the clounds, suspended by nothing but the sheer will of their ihabitants, and he learned of giant labyrinth cities tunneled underground. But nothing happened. The more time was passing, the more comfortable Navarre was feeling with her, and at the end of the second day, it was feeling as if they had been together for weeks now. He had even learned how Aneesh was talking to Yshya, through some sort of magic link, they were exchanging thoughts, just like normal people talk. Not all too often, but enough to let him wonder what they were talking about at times. The sun is setting at the end of their second day together. His wounds, healed mostly, except for a few still itching nicks and scratches, but nothing too serious. Aneesh keeps telling him that, no matter what her healing skills would be, she hasn’t seen anyone recovering that fast. He doesn’t listen, he avoids the subject if he is able to and he hopes she doesn’t notice that. “Well m’lady, let us set forth to do whatever you came here to check for, and we’ll be ready to go to your people”, he says, the old and meanwhile almost forgotten excitement settling in again. He can smell adventure and mysteries, and he has a vengeance to deal… “Patience, Navarre, we’ll spend this last night here, and head on when morning breaks. But you need all the rest you can get”, Aneesh responded, obviously amused by his intrepid attitude. “Let’s get ready for the night”. And together they adjusted their bedrolls and cuddled inside. They did not set up a watch, for Yshya was somehow never really asleep and always keeping an eye on them, and even Navarre had gotten accustomed to that and was feeling very safe and protected. Although it was still his duty, or so he was saying, as a man, to protest every evening and to try and stand watch to protect Aneesh. Before he was falling sound asleep that is. For six days and six nights evil had been out hunting now. Three nights since they had lost their prey. They could not possibly assumei it would strike this night. Add to that the fact that Yshya knew a lot about magic, and had a keen sense for sorcery. Yet, her sense was sharpened and well-aware for the magic of the living, and for the magic of the spirits. But the world of the dead has its own magic and its own laws, and no living being can claim to fully understand them, be it man or wyrm. And so, the shadows floating above the ground, slowly searching and hesitantly making their way forward, were not noticeable to Yshya’s gaze. The dark tentactles trembling and waving, stretching onward from the patches of darkness hovering one or two inches above the ground did not raise any suspicions in the dark and cold night…