It was hard to keep from showing her concern but Damarys did her best to put a good face on it all. They weren’t terribly deep in the woods, but they were in a more dangerous, less traveled part of it and that made it more likely that they’d run into trouble. The animals here would be less likely to recognize people as a threat since they encountered them here far less often. They’d have to go slow for Emilie which meant taking longer to get back into safer regions of the wilds. If the others thought the troll was bad…

Dinner that night was a muted affair. Emilie hardly ate anything and then went to bed early. Kasyn helped her into her bed roll and then rejoined Damarys and Zeter around the fire.

“She’ll be alright,” he sighed and Damarys wasn’t sure if it was meant as a question or a statement.

“How long do you think it’ll take us to get back to Yomichi?” Zeter asked.

“Three more days?” Damarys guessed, “Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes us five. Walking through the brush is hard enough when you can see what you’re stepping over and through. I can only imagine how hard it is for Emilie being blind.”

They ate a bit more for lack of anything else to do, with Kasyn poking at the coals from time to time and sending sparks up into the night sky. Damarys knew she should have told him not to do it, especially since they were still so close to the elder tree, and when she heard the screech she knew it was too late now.

“Get down!” She shouted and dove away from the fire.

A moment later, a pair of huge claws swooped down from the darkness and gouged through the earth around the fire. There wasn’t time to check if anyone had been injured so Damarys just scrambled for her bow and quiver.

Kasyn’s skeletons formed up at once and braced their shields against a second attack that came in the form of a tail swipe.

“It’s the wyvern!” Zeter shouted though Damarys didn’t need him to tell her that.

Magic blossomed, illuminating Zeter for a moment before it blasted against the wyvern’s hide. The spell, whatever it was, didn’t seem to do much actual damage to the beast though it was enough to make it pull back rather than strike at them again. Kasyn’s skeleton’s took advantage of the momentary distraction and began thrusting their spears at the wyvern’s neck and face where its scales were weaker.

It took Damarys far too long to get her bow out and strung but once she did she fired an arrow straight at one of the wyvern’s eyes. She missed. She fired again, and missed again. Her bow wasn’t strong enough to pierce the wyvern’s scales so the eyes were the only real weakness she could exploit but her aim wasn’t good enough anymore to reliably hit such a small, moving target.

Zeter struck at it again, though this time the wyvern got its wing up in time and deflected the magic, sending a burst of color flashing up against the canopy above. In the same motion it caught Zeter with the edge of its wing and flung him back into the dark.

Kasyn’s magic struck true, however, and he blinded the beast by coating its head in a thick, oily substance that steamed and made the wyvern cry out in pain while it tried to wipe it away on the ground. As it thrashed around, Damarys set herself and stilled her breathing, waiting for the wyvern to turn her way. She could feel her heart beat slowing down and when the wyvern paused to blink its eyes and clear the last of the goo away, Damarys loosed her arrow.

This time, her aim was true and the shaft sunk deep into the creature’s head. It jerked, shrieking and flailing about, but its body didn’t seem to be working quite right anymore. Kasyn’s skeletons moved in and stabbed its other eye out, as well as piercing the thinner hide beneath its jaw. They didn’t stop stabbing until the wyvern lay still.

“Everyone okay?” Damarys called out.

Kasyn raised his hand, barely visible in the dim light of their scattered fire. Zeter came back into view a moment later, clutching his side while magicking the coals and smoldering logs back together and reforming their fire.

“Broken ribs,” he winced, breathing shallow and looking pale.

“We can bind your ribs to minimize your pain, but that’s about it,” Damarys told him and he nodded.

“I know,” he said, “at least that’s the worst of it.”

Slowly, they got their camp put back together. It was only as Damarys and Kasyn were finding the bedrolls that she remembered about Emilie. In the entire fight she hadn’t heard or seen her. She assumed Emilie was just staying low and out of the fight, but now that it was over she should have heard from her.

“Emilie!” she called out and immediately Zeter and Kasyn had the same worried looks on their faces telling her that they’d forgotten about Emilie as well.

They spread out, searching for her until Zeter gave out a shout.

“She’s here!”

Damarys rushed over and her fears were confirmed. Emilie had a long gash across her front from the wyvern’s talons.

“She must have been hit when the wyvern first attacked,” Damarys gasped, pulling away the torn clothing and exposing the wound fully. It wasn’t as deep as she feared, but she knew wyvern’s had poisoned claws and teeth. “We need to clean this, now,” she said. “Zeter, get some water boiling on the fire. Kasyn, help me carry her.”

Emilie groaned as they lifted her but made no other signs of being aware of her surroundings. She wasn’t bleeding out terribly quickly, which might be a good thing, or it might mean they were already too late. Either way, Damarys wasn’t going to just sit around and do nothing.

As soon as the water was boiling, Damarys used strips of clean cloth, dipped in the water, to clean out the wound. There was dirt and rocks and bits of plant matter all over it and she needed to see clearly what the damage was before she could begin treating the injury. It would also help remove any lingering poison. As she worked, she instructed Kasyn and Zeter on where to place wadding and how to bind the wound. Staunching the blood flow was, thankfully, not too difficult with none of the major arteries cut. Then they wrapped her torso in long strips of cloth to help hold the torn flesh together and Damarys even added a few clumsy stitches.

“That’s as much as I know how to do,” she admitted. “She’ll still need an antidote for the poison, though, and I don’t know how to make that.”

“The Sages of the Mercurial Robe have the antidote on hand,” Zeter announced with uncanny certainty. “We just have to get her to them.”

“How fast can you move?” she nodded towards his ribs.

Zeter began to speak, declaring his capability, when he stopped and shook his head.

“You and Emilie could each lie on a tower shield and we could carry you on those,” Kasyn suggested. “My skeletons are strong enough for that. It might be a bit bumpy but better than leaving you behind.”

“Alright then,” Damarys said and looked up at the sky. “I can navigate at night and day as long as I can see the stars. Let’s get moving.”

“Shouldn’t we at least get a little sleep first?” Kasyn asked.

“Emilie won’t make it more than a couple of days without the antidote. We’ll sleep when we reach Yomichi.”

With that she got up and eased Emilie onto a tower shield. Two of Kasyn’s skeletons grabbed hold of either end and lifted it up with ease. Kasyn and his final skeleton were already carrying Zeter on another shield and Damarys began leading them through the trees after lighting a torch to show her the ground around her. She checked the sky every few minutes to make sure they were going in the right direction but other than that she just focused on moving as quickly as she could. She and Kasyn swapped places from time to time to let him rest from carrying Zeter and by the time the sun began to rise in the east, both their hands were aching from the effort.

“Let me walk for a bit,” Zeter said and both Damarys and Kasyn were happy to let him try.

He wasn’t terribly slow, much to Damarys’ surprise, though he could only maintain that pace for an hour or so. Still, it was a good break and after that hour he climbed back onto the shield. In that time, Kasyn had fashioned a sort of sling that wrapped around the neck and then under the shields so the strain wouldn’t be fully on their hands and it made the process of carrying him much more tolerable.

“Don’t let me slow our pace,” Damarys said, partly to herself and partly to Kasyn.

They were both exhausted but Emilie needed them to hurry. Purple lines were spreading from the wound, showing the progress of the poison’s damage. A game trail, going mostly in the same direction as they were already traveling was tempting but it would mean an increased chance of running into wild animals. Then again, it also meant they could move faster.

“I’m taking us onto a game trail,” she warned. “Keep your eyes and ears open for any sign of wildlife. We don’t want to spook anything so let’s keep talking. Tell me about yourself, Kasyn, what did you do before coming to Yomichi?”

“I helped manage a chapel of Akumu, he replied.

Damarys figured she ought to have assumed as much.

“I got quite sick last winter and I prayed to Akumu, telling him that if he healed me then I’d give myself to him as part of the next Soul Tithe. I recovered shortly thereafter and here I am. I left my wife and son to tend to the chapel in my stead.”

“You have a family?” That shocked Damarys more than anything else. “How could you leave them like that? They’ll never get to see you again.”

“I expect they’ll follow in my footsteps in the coming years, once the chapel has someone else to manage the chapel.”

“How many followers do you have back home?”

“Me? None. But Akumu has a few dozen that attend the chapel.”

Damarys let the slight pedantic comment slide since she needed the conversation to continue.

“What brought you to worship Akumu?”

“I’ve always felt a connection to him. He’s so clearly deific, the creator of our world, that I couldn’t help but worship him.”

“Akumu’s said that he didn’t create the world, that he isn’t a god.”

“He’s just testing us.”

“Wouldn’t that make Akumu a liar, then?”

“Why can’t he lie? He isn’t a god of truth, but of creation, and lies are a form of creation.”

Damarys could see the path Kasyn’s reasoning was taking, but she didn’t agree with it. Akumu was pretty explicit about not being a god and having very little interest in being worshiped. Still, he didn’t forbid it.

“What about you?” Kasyn asked. “Besides hunting, what’s your life been like here in Yomichi?”

“Nothing too exciting really,” she admitted to Kasyn’s obvious disappointment. “I was born and raised here. Always had a knack for archery and began my training as a hunter when I was eleven. My parents were merchants in Ichiba Wa when I was younger but now they manage a shipping fleet out on the coast. They come through every once in a while on one of their trade ships to see me.”

It had been a year since their last visit and she wondered what they’d heard about the attack. She hadn’t really thought about it until just now, but the collapse of Akumu’s kingdom would ruin her parent’s business since they relied on the exports flowing from the capitol city.

“What about you, Zeter?” Damarys asked, knowing it was unlikely she’d get very much.

“I worked odd jobs, mostly for the Sages of the Mercurial Robe,” he said. “Running deliveries, collecting things for them, that sort of thing.”

“And how often was what you did illegal?” Kasyn probed.

“Most of my work was on the edge of legality,” Zeter admitted. “Getting copies of books from the Toshokans is a good example of that sort of work. There’s no law specifically against it, but the purpose behind the Toshokans that Akumu controls access to is presumably to control who has access to their knowledge. The Sages thought they could decide for themselves.”

“What’s the most illegal thing you’ve ever done?” Kasyn pressed and Damarys could hear the eagerness in his voice, as though hoping to be able to turn Zeter in for his wrong doing.

When Zeter didn’t respond, Kasyn let the subject drop. They took it in turns, then, to talk about whatever they could think of until the game trail curved away and they had to leave the game trail and get back to trail blazing their way back towards Yomichi.