Runesight

8 - Underfolk

Eliax walked back towards Alsen's place, contemplating the merits of trying to actually make friends with these people. She had Illila...apparently. Even if she was kind of annoyed at her still for spilling her secrets, it was clearly not the end of the world yet.

It had only been a couple of days though, she couldn't accurately say if any of these connections would last. She didn't really know any of them yet.

What would her future look like? What would she be doing in a year? In ten? If she could get past the paint, could she ever be a normal person? She...might one day look back on all this and regret it.

Eliax shook her head and pulled out her notebook, flipping through the pages and pages of memories, it was still mostly blank, there was still so much that she didn't know. She couldn't simply leave it alone. She hadn't been able to do that for ten years. Ten years of picking at the broken pieces and wishing she could see the whole picture.

She flipped to the first page, remembering when Estin had given her the journal, when she'd actually used it as a journal.

1st of Teivet, 766

I remembered my mothers face today, she was beautiful. Somehow I know that she's dead. I think my father is dead too, whoever he was. At least I have Estin. We're leaving Aubinere today, I think that there's someone after him, but I've never seen them.

He goes to taverns a lot, I think he's trying to forget something. Why would he want that? I can barely remember what kind of food I like, I would hate to forget.

Eliax breathed out slowly, pondering her future. She could make money with dimensionalism, if she could ever focus on it enough, if she could find the memories she knew she had that contained the secrets of the craft.

She breathed in again and paused at the scent of rot.

Her mind sharpened in less than a moment, she felt her hand stray to her knife and instinctively draw it, she peered past the street lamps into the darkness of the night, trying to get her eyes to focus on what she knew was there. It shuffled in the darkness and the scent of rot increased.

A creature.

Something dead.

Eliax decided right then that no matter how this ended, she would look for some light spells. No matter how bad she was at them. She ended up in the darkness far too much without suitable lighting for this to be something she could keep ignoring.

Eliax stepped backward, prompting the creature to step forward.

It looked like a Saelden, the tree folk that were closer to being golems than intelligent beings. This one was shaped more like a canine though, standing on four legs, the twisting branches that made up its body were in that unmistakable shape, but it was also somehow wrong. Most of its leaves were completely gone and the ones that remained were brown and dead, barely sticking onto the cracked wood.

Pieces of the wood were missing, revealing an inky black abyss beneath it, like a shell that was hiding something terrible. An entire front leg was missing, leaving nothing but leaking darkness in the shape of an arm, instead of paws it had claws that grasped at the air with jerking motions.

Eliax almost screamed.

Almost.

She refused to stoop to that level though, the level of someone who didn't have enough self control to push past her terror. She should be better than that. She should always be better. That didn't mean she wasn't scared though, she couldn't control that part. That just proved how badly she was failing.