Excerpt from Alexan’s Eighth Journal, Tour of the Crags and Builders.

It is often a guessing game when members of different races come into conflict. You can always guess that a fleeing Dwarf or Galm will be using earth magic to smooth their tracks, or make an educated assumption that you won’t be able to hear a Siren that doesn’t want to be heard.

I often envy the Giants who can depend solely on being bigger and stronger than anyone they encounter. There is no individual so rare as a Giant who can use aether and as a result, their decisions are simpler.

But that sheer size and strength of the Giants means you should think twice about pursuing them in the first place.

Unnamed Talkarn

It was easy to forget how the Hollow Home was made up of many disparate types of wood.

One limb might be made of hardwood, while sprouting various kinds of softwood branches. One patch of surface will have deep craggy bark while next to it will be a patch of paper thin bark that peels in strips. Inside the trunk, the different types of wood had a tendency to blend together.

Travelling from bough to bough along the outer reaches of the tree, those differences were much more obvious. It also meant the secondary branches could drastically change at any time. One consequence of this was that of the few ways off their current bough, one of them looked far too flimsy to travel. After a short distance, the limb became little more than a collection of vines.

This left them hiding in a stand of minor branches that might be just barely sufficient for cover from above, but the bare trunks of these branches only made Tal more nervous as they looked at the creature guarding the bridge.

“Do we go the other way?” Tal asked.

The bough upon which they now stood had only three bridges linking it to other main limbs. The one leading downwards from which they had come, a flimsy set of vines leading upwards and clockwise around the tree, and this much sturdier looking branch before them. If they didn’t go this way, they would have to go back, retracing their steps to the previous bough. So Nolsa, Tal, Easil and Layessa really wanted to cross this branch.

A branch that was guarded by something no one who lived within the barrier wanted to see.

“I’m not sure the vines will even hold you Tal,” Easil muttered.

“Hey, don’t call him fat!” Layessa joked.

“I am reluctant to retreat backwards and downwards,” Nolsa admitted as they stared at their problem.

The leaf bear was bad news wherever it was encountered. It wasn’t the quietest of monsters in the Hollow Home when moving: the scaled leaf-like hide that inspired its name gave it a unique rustling sound as it moved. But when sitting still, it was nearly silent. The leaf bear was peaceful, to a point. That point being whether or not the beast thought it was alone. Some of the older hunters in Lisnail described it as “utterly terrifying” when chasing something.

Right now this beast had no idea they were there, its attention entirely on a particularly unhappy hive of bees.

While the four of them looking at the bear wished it were anywhere else, the bees’ nest the bear was harassing was almost certainly far more upset. It was the buzzing that had given away the presence of the bear first.

As they watched, the bear patiently reached above him with a frighteningly long limb to scoop up another paw full of honey. Then, unconcerned with the furious buzzing from the horde of bees crawling around its arm and face, the bear happily munched a piece of honeycomb stuck between its massive claws. Tal shivered at the sight of some very big and sharp-looking canines. When the honeycomb was gone it started licking the honey from between its claws and around its paw.

“Well, I don’t want to fight it,” Tal muttered.

“Probably the smartest thing I’ve heard you say,” Easil teased.

“So what do we do?” Tal asked. “Can we lure it away?”

“If we were to lure it away, no simple or subtle means would do it,” Nolsa replied. “It might react to seeing us and decide it needed to chase whoever it spotted away from its prize. That’s… not a good idea.”

“Yeah, leaf bears move faster than any of us can run,” Layessa warned. “Not to mention, they can climb better than any of us and rip through wood like it isn’t there. Hiding from them means not letting them know we are here, once it knows we’re here, that’s it. There is no getting away after that.”

“Then maybe that’s all we need to do,” Tal whispered. Nolsa looked at him with a bit of concern and maybe curiosity;, he wasn’t sure. Layessa and Easil didn’t speak.

“Go on,” Nolsa prompted.

Tal grimaced, sighed, then started to explain. “When me and Easil want to hide, we surround ourselves in a barrier of darkness and block all sound. It works great in the tunnels which were dark to begin with. I’m wondering if we can just… box the bear in.”

“That’s not the worst idea I’ve heard,” Nolsa ventured. “We probably don’t have to box it in entirely, although it might be easier to surround ourselves with a barrier of silence. Are you up for it, Easil?”

Easil hesitated for a moment. That moment stretched on long enough for Tal to wonder if he was okay. Just as Tal was going to ask, Easil spoke up.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Easil replied with confidence that belied his hesitation. “I will have to drop the listening spell however… and I’ll need a rest before I can bring it back up after.”

Nolsa took a breath and squared her shoulders. “That is reasonable. While you do that, Tal and I will blind the leaf bear.”

“How are we going to blind it?” Tal asked. “Are we going to stick a dome over its head or make a wall?”

“You know more about the leaf bears, Easil; are they particularly smart?” Nolsa wondered.

“Not that it’s been mentioned,” Easil replied. “Mostly the talk is about how dangerous they are.”

Nolsa nodded to herself. “Well then, we are going to do this the easier way. When Easil has his enchantment ready, we are going to stick a dome over its head and run for it.”

“What?” Tal hissed in surprise.

“Lots of Erlkin children play this game,” Nolsa told him with a little smile. “Cover its head with a little ball of darkness and see how it reacts. ‘It’ being whatever critter the child has decided to harass.”

Tal felt his face darken as an unwelcome memory rose up in his mind. He shook his head and banished the remembrance before it could distract him. “So you think we’ll have time to run, then?”

Tal was close enough to Nolsa to feel the cool prickling of his skin as she began circulating aether. The hair on his neck rose as well as Easil started preparing his spell of silence.

Nolsa went on to explain her reasoning. “The leaf bear will almost certainly be stunned and confused at first if it is covered by darkness. If it isn’t being directly attacked, the leaf bear will move with caution at first. That should give us enough time to escape up the branch.”

“Yeah, that sounds correct,” Layessa agreed. “There isn’t anything that really threatens a leaf bear. I don’t think it’ll lash out.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Nolsa said.

Tal twitched as Nolsa touched his wrist “Nolsa?”

“Take out your hollow wand and share mana with me; I want you to observe what I’m doing.”

“Okay,” Tal replied, pulling the wand from the thin pouch at his forearm and placing it in his right hand. Nolsa placed her hand over the wand to hold his hand. Tal steadied himself and fed aether to the wand for Nolsa to use, while she brought her right hand close to gather the mana for building her spell.

“There are four concepts at the core of the spell I’m going to cast,” Nolsa explained quietly. “Darkness is the most obvious, to obscure the sight of the leaf bear. But I don’t want it to stick or block the bear at all, so you have to refine those parts out. Shaping you are familiar with, although I’m limiting the concept to that of a simple dome.”

“Okay,” Tal replied absentmindedly, most of his concentration in the mass of mana growing between Nolsa’s hands.

“I am using the shoot concept as well, which you should be familiar enough with by now. Finally, I then combine it with a trigger so the dome isn’t created until the spell arrives. With that combination, the spell should activate around the leaf bear as quickly as possible without it noticing.”

Tal could feel Nolsa building the spell by steps. The core of the spell contained the shoot idea while the containing shell formed with the imagining of being triggered by touching the bear. The orb then filled in with the mana that would create the darkness needed to blind the bear.Tal could feel the spell shivering slightly as the constrained shaping component was prevented from opening up into a dome by the shell.

Tal was impressed at how Nolsa was able to build each concept into the spell, piece by piece. She was definitely taking it slow and the drain on his aether was substantial as a result of taking it slow and making it so clear to him, but it was worth the strain.

The construct filled up with mana, and Tal felt the moment Nolsa considered it done.

“Are you ready?” Easil asked, his voice distant as he concentrated on his own spell.

“We are,” Nolsa answered. Tal could feel the spell tugging at Nolsa’s control, ready to fly off and serve its purpose.

“Go,” Easil commanded.

Nolsa released the little black orb.

Easil’s spell of silence surrounded them, so Tal couldn’t hear it, but he could see the initial reaction of the bear when the little black orb struck. He could see the confused grunt as the bear looked down at where the spell touched its belly, only for the dome to form around the beast.

“Run!” Nolsa hissed, staying quiet out of habit.

They ran. Tal’s boots thumped on the wood with Nolsa’s hooves tapping along beside him. They ran past the shadow, only for Tal to flinch hard as a set of huge, sticky claws groped blindly through the dome.

And that was it, they were past the bear and on their way up the branch to the next bough.

When they were far enough to be out of danger, Tal looked back, just in time to see the leaf bear slowly stick his head through the dome. It looked about, confused by the novel experience, but clearly didn’t spot them halfway up the branch. A couple of moments later, the barrier dissipated as it ran out of power and the bear cautiously went back to what it was doing.

“I have to release the silence spell,” Easil spoke up.

“We should be far enough away,” Nolsa noted, looking back once more at the peaceful monster they’d avoided.

The silence spell was released and Tal could once again hear the snuffling and chewing sounds of the bear behind them, along with the distant calls of birds and beasts going about their business.

“That went pretty well,” Nolsa commented cheerfully.

“Mm-hmm,” Tal agreed, still mulling over how Nolsa had built the spell.

Several hours later.

“A leaf-bear,” he noted, his flat voice muffled by the enchanted mask over his mouth.

“Yes, I can see it,” came the annoyed reply, her voice also disguised by the second of the masks over her mouth.

Neither of them liked the enchanted items, but it was unwise to speak normally when chasing a user of wind. As annoying as the stuffy things were, the masks were each paired to a wooden plug in the ear of their respective partner. This way, they could talk without their voices giving them away.

“How long do you think it has been here?”

“Half the beehive is scattered on the wood around the bear. It has been here for hours.”

A long moment of silence filled the air.

“We’ve chosen the wrong way.”

“So it seems. I had thought this was the correct way after finding the corpse of the winghound.”

The pair of them stared at the beast as it napped underneath the hive directly in front of the path. They had watched it settle in just a moment ago, which had allowed them a bit of breathing room. Only a fool would mess with a leaf bear.

“The vine path perhaps?”

“The Human is too heavy, he would have broken one of the vines. As a forager, he is fit enough that he might have been able to climb the vine regardless, but there is no sign of them going that way.”

“Then we will have to retrace our path and pick a different way.”

“Yes we will. Let us hurry, we do not want to fall behind now.”

End Chapter