Severance: Sword and Fang

Sword and Fang {P.II}

A soft tune, a melodious acapella carried gently along on the placid autumn breeze, rustling slightly the browning leaves which seemed to shudder in tune with the ballad, strummed from the vocals of the canaries perched among the trees.

Within the thick brush a choir of the song loving birds whistled their tune in perfect synchronization, creating a peaceful harmony that blanketed the Koviri Forest in a warm quilt of comfort. Beneath them a graceful faun skipped out of the grove, sniffing around the brush and taking its share of plump blackberries from a generous shrub. From across the thicket emerged a fox, silently, it's ruddy pelt bristled with brown leaves and dirt. The faun, unafraid of the fox's presence, continued to dine on the shrubbery.

The fox approached cautiously, using it's acute sense of smell to examine the berries, just as the faun had. Satisfied, he contentedly plucked the black fruit from the bush. The halla did not mind sharing, and together they ate, filling up their bellies gleefully. The birds continued to sing.

And then came the abrupt sound of a horse sneezing, oblivious to the peace it was disturbing. The fox and faun, their chins dripping with black juice, scampered off into the thicket, startled and in fear.

The canary choir stopped singing.

"Way to go."

The horse sneezed again as if to mock it's rider's sarcasm.
"You're going to attract the attention of a monster if you keep making all that racket."

But on the contrary, as Saaryn had already noticed, there was a deceiving lack of monsters roaming the forest, at least from what he could see on the road he was travelling on. He had been riding at a slow pace for nearly an hour and he'd seen only foxes, fauns, squirrels, and other harmless creatures, but not a single monster. No welth or vendeer ambushed him.

Not even the Ha'shil'ir, whose territory was said to overlap with Glesh's, bothered him. Saaryn even expected at any moment a sylvian, a sentient and territorial tree creature common to the Koviri, to strike at him from a camouflaged hiding place. But the forest was quiet, nothing dared perturb nature's peace.

Except his horse's allergies.

When he departed Glesh the sun was hanging high above the looming oak forest. Now it had began it's scheduled departure from the world, sinking slowly behind the western horizon and emitting a vibrant orange glow beyond the mountains that made the sky appear as if it had been set on fire.

As night crawled across the abandoned sky the moon and stars revealed themselves and cast their empyrean glow onto the landscape, their light an abysmal imitation of the sun's luminosity. Not that the lack of illumination bothered Saaryn, he preferred the night and the nocturnal advantages it offered. That, and he doubted the werewolf hunted during daylight. It, like him, favored the dark.

It was during this time that all sightings of the beast were reported, and as a result it was this time during which Glesh's denizens were advised not to roam the forest after an unofficial, but sensibly adhered to, curfew.

 As the autumn night's chill fell upon the air Saaryn was thankful for the warmth his gambeson provided. His breath escaped his lips in a visible cloud of vapor and his horse shivered beneath him. He pulled over his cowl to help ward off the cold. A stern snort from his mount told Saaryn that the horse did not agree with the weather, nor with the ominous ambience that had draped itself over the once peaceful forest. Now, the sound of countless leaves and twigs being crunched and snapped replaced the soothing melody of the canary choir. Saaryn leaned down and patted the horse with a gloved hand to calm it.

"It's going to be a long night." He said, "Better get used to it."

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