Glen eyed the gnomish creature full of suspicion. He expected him to vanish any moment now, taking advantage of the dark. Speaking of the darn dark…

“I have torches in Val’s bags,” He offered. Glen was still waiting for the feeling to return to his left arm to get them himself.

“We won’t stay,” Lith replied, coming back from where she’d disappeared to. “Before we leave, you need to tell me how you did it.”

Glen pursed his lips. He glanced towards the dwarf, Fikumin food something, Lith had said, but he wasn’t really paying attention during that first moments since the incident. Apparently Lith had healed him back, or something. Fikumin returned his stare, a hand searching in a pocket of his baggy tunic, before pulling a half-eaten piece of yellow cheese out and pushing it into his cavernous mouth.

“I didn’t do anything,” Glen replied with a shake of his head at the weird spectacle.

Lith, fully dressed now, approached him menacingly, face hidden in the dark, but for her glowing softly white-gold eyes. Glen was still sitting with his back at the big redwood tree trunk, he had fainted on top of earlier.

“You used a spell,” Lith said, measuring her words.

“I’m pretty sure getting knocked unconscious isn’t any spell—”

“You make light of what happened?” The Zilan hissed cutting him off midsentence, taking him by surprise.

“Wow, wait a god darn minute there!” Glen fired back. “I told ye. I didn’t do anything. One moment I was looking for yer arse, the next I woke up and saw him,” Fikumin raised a short arm in greeting.

Lith blinked, large eyes turning a shade of green.

“You were looking…” She trailed, unsure how to continue.

“Looking for you.” Glen explained quickly.

“Why not say it thus?”

“It’s a bloody expression!” Soren is using it all the fucking time!

Lith cocked her head to the side.

“You’re stalling Glenavon,” She glanced towards the barely visible in the darkness Fikumin and the dwarf shrugged his small shoulders. Glen had the sneaky feeling, he was the only one inconvenienced by the night. “How did you do it? I won’t ask again.”

Was that a freaking threat?

“I told you. I couldn’t find you, got frustrated and asked the dagger to do it for me,” Glen explained, slowly getting back on his feet. The young man wasn’t going to tell them about the nightmare, most of it he didn’t remember anyway, and whatever was left he kind of wished it went away as well. “That’s the long and short of it.”

Lith took a step back.

“You will lie to me?” She quizzed, her voice exuding indignation.

What? The fuck ye think ye are?

“It’s not a lie,” He said instead, opting for a diplomatic approach.

“The dagger can’t do that.”

“Ahm, you’re wrong girl.”

Lith grabbed him by the collar with one hand and slammed his back on the trunk. One moment she was two meters away, the other the Zilan was breathing an inch from his face.

“You’ll lie even after I warned you not to?” She jeered, sounding doubly mad.

Glen snatched her wrist with his good hand and made to push it away, realized he couldn’t, her grip solid as rock and sighed pensively.

“It’s not a lie Lith,” He said, deciding that calling her a girl earlier was a step too much, “I’m telling the truth. I asked and it found you.”

The Zilan let him go with a frustrated hiss.

“You’re lying Glenavon,” She shook her head. “Using a spell like that, it’s… you could’ve died, or left a cripple.”

“Lith, I don’t know any spells, a couple of hours ago, I wasn’t sure magic existed,” Glen said. “Most believe it doesn’t.”

“Can I see the dagger?” Fikumin asked and turned to look his way, paused unsure for a moment and then lowered his eyes. The creature was barely taller than his knee.

“It can’t be it, Fikumin,” Lith said sounding exhausted.

“How do you know?” Glen asked, remembering Jinx’s words. He offered the weapon to the dwarf, while Lith seemed to ponder on her answer. If she is holding back, Glen thought. Then I can’t trust her.

The fact he was holding back as well, escaping him.

“I told you, it was a gift,” Lith started walking back and forth nervously, the dark not bothering her. Glen could barely see anything and the forest had started looking extremely sinister. “It was given to placate… a queen, by a sorceress. It happened a very long time ago. It is a fairly well-known story.”

“First time I’m hearing it.”

“A story of my people,” Lith explained.

“If it can’t do magic, how do you explain what happened?”

Lith let out a frustrated sigh. “You talk about things, you can’t possibly understand.”

“Explain then, so I can,” Glen urged her, watching out of the corner of his eye Fikumin return, holding a torch in one hand, the dagger in the other.

“You know what it does already. You knew since the start,” Lith said, her tone troubled.

“It helps me understand your language.”

“It speaks all tongues,” Lith explained, confusing him further. “The Queen thought it a useful tool.”

“Why?”

Lith sighed, crossed her hands on her chest and stared at the blackness of the canopy above their heads.

“Lith?” Glen probed her again. “How is understanding all tongues, such a prominent gift for a Zilan Queen? You had no problem, learning common in four months!”

She grimaced, the memory either too personal, or too difficult to divulge. Glen remembered the woman in his nightmare. Was it her back then? He wondered. Could it be? But the place seemed so alien, the memory ancient… he shook his head, pushing the dream away and clenched his left fist hard, trying to wake up the muscles.

“Aniculo Laebae,” Fikumin said simply in the first language, large eyes glowing in the light of the torch as he examined the dagger. He didn’t understand him, but Glen had heard the first word spoken before and raised a questioning brow to a pouting Lith.

“The Wyvern’s Tongue,” She said yielding to his query and seeing he still hadn’t figured it out, the Zilan added uncomfortably. “The name was chosen for a reason, Glenavon.”

“Aha-ha-ha,” Glen laughed, when she finished, tears in his eyes. “You almost got me there for a freakin’ moment!” He could accept a bit of magic helping him understand what she was sprouting when frustrated, even conjuring a spell to counter hers whether she liked it, or not. A dagger could maybe do that, if it was made by a fuckin’ witch, Glen decided. But sitting here and believing it could make some gods’ damn beast from eons past, speak in any fuckin’ tongue, was a bridge too bloody far for him.

Glen had to draw a line somewhere…

“There’s nothing amusing to this tale, Glenavon,” Lith said, the light creating shadows that danced on her face and her tone foreboding. “What you did up there, cannot happen again. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Using the living to channel, forcing a spell when you’re not allowed to, is a forbidden practice. Lost to the ages, before the Folk and first people came to be. Dangerous. Evil. Next time, it might take more than your arm. Next time, it could be permanent. The empire banned those practicing it for a reason.”

…but I could be flexible, strategic even, he thought, not paying much attention to her winded elucidation.

He’d learned that from Emerson and from a lifetime of crime in the streets.

“No more magic stuff,” Glen relented, ending their conversation.

Until he learned more that is.

That last part he left out.

They took the path back out of the forest soon after. No one was in a talkative mood. Lith led the way, with Fikumin lost somewhere inside her cape, a trick Glen should have figured out ages ago, but he’d time to learn her secrets, he thought. His left hand was slow to recover, but it was better now, than what it was an hour back, which was promising.

Two men with torches trying to dislodge what looked like a hapless rider trapped under his horse forced them to stop, when they reached the main road leading west towards the bridge. Lith jumped from her horse and approached on foot, when one of them waved his torch and called for help.

“Darn animal just gave out under him,” One of them said, unshaven face over a roughly patched up mail. “We can’t pull him out. Lend us a hand lads.”

“Let me see for myself,” Lith said.

Glen jumped down from Val as well and walked towards the clearly dead mount. It had a large wound on its hind leg that had bled out, a black pool gathering where it’d fallen.

“The man isn’t moving,” Lith said, still stooped over. Glen couldn’t see him from where he was standing.

“He’s just hurt badly from the fall,” The other stranger explained. A thin and lanky Lorian wearing leather armour that had seen better days. Glen hadn’t seen them before and he knew what most of the locals looked by now. All forty seven of them.

“Give her your torch,” The first man said, with a shifty smirk. “So she can see better.”

Glen felt a shiver run down his spine and took a step back, a warning lodged in his throat. The man sensed him hesitating and turned his way.

“Are you lord Reeves?” He asked before Glen could decide whether he should warn Lith. What if he was wrong? He dropped his hand to his side, fingers tensely touching the handle of his sword.

The whole situation had come out of the left field and he was still too rattled from earlier, to fully trust his instincts.

“Who’s asking?” He asked, stalling for time and searching for a plan that didn’t involve him running away. He couldn’t just abandon her.

“Names Petaerson,” The shifty man explained, light of the torch making his face distort this way and that with each word. “We were paid to find ye.”

“Why?” Glen inquired, seeing the other man offer Lith his torch out of the corner his eye.

“Word is out ye’ve gone missing,” The man explained, with a friendly smile. He was missing in a sense, was the truth of it, he thought. It was a good excuse to give for waiting for them to show up in the middle of the night. Genius even, if delivered properly.

But this man was clearly lying.

Glen took a cautionary step back and unsheathed his sword, just as the ruffian’s friend struck Lith in the chest with the torch, an explosion of burning splinters covering the Zilan that tried to dodge, but was tripped over by a third assailant and struck again on the head. Petaerson went for his sword as well, using the torch to keep him away.

It wasn’t the first time this ruffian had fought a man by the side of the road.

This was bad.

Glen lunged forward aiming for his head, but Petaerson ducked under it, almost got him with the torch right on the face, managing instead to blind him for a second.

The young man stumbled back, his eyes stinging and panic setting in, as the experienced ruffian advanced on him confidently. Glen blocked a blade aimed for his gut, got smacked on the right shoulder with the torch, burning splinters landing on the side of his head and parried the return away at the last moment, his un-maimed ear a hot cauldron of pain, half his hairs there singed.

“Fuck,” Glen cried, swinging with his blade blind, but his opponent smartly stayed away.

Glen looked towards Lith saw her on her knees, a sword blade touching her neck and cursed again. At least she’d gutted the man with the torch, he thought, sidestepping to keep the shifty Petaerson in his sights. The man seeing him more focused now grimaced and pulled back.

“Kill the wench,” Petaerson ordered and retreated towards his friend, torch illuminating the unlikely pair. “I need some help here.”

“No!” Glen yelled, but all he could do was watch impotent, as the third ruffian pulled the hood back to reveal Lith’s cobalt head and exotic face.

“What the hell is this thing?” The man standing over her said shocked.

Several things happened in quick succession after his words.

Lith opened a mouth full of gnarly teeth and bit hard on the hand holding the sword, Petaerson rushed to his aid, with Glen running after him, but still too far to offer assistance. The man tried to pull his hand away and managed it with a heart-rending cry, losing a huge chunk of flesh and his sword in the process. Petaerson, a good three meters ahead of Glen, dropped the torch and charged at full sprint, his blade aimed at Lith’s turned back, while she leaped on the retreating brigand going for his face this time. The bleeding ruffian went down, with the Zilan on top of him, but managed to put his fist in her mouth, before she’d time to savage his face.

Little good it did him.

The man’s scream pierced Glen’s ears, who’d succeeded to close the distance from Petaerson in the meantime, after sprinting faster than he ever had in his life. He reached him just as the ruffian raised his sword to plunge it into a frenzied Lith’s back.

“Uh,” Petaerson said, more a gasp than a word and dropped his sword, before Glen had the time to swing at him. The ruffian shuddered, his legs buckling and collapsed on his back, two crossbow bolts stuck in his chest.

What in the slovenly fuck, just happened? Glen wondered, as he rushed to pull Lith away from the third man, now missing several fingers from his right hand. The Zilan snarled at him, mouth and gnarly teeth covered in blood, eyes glassy and unfocused.

“SHE’S… TAKEN ME HAND!” The wounded man cried miserably.

“Lith, snap out of it!” Glen yelled greatly worried, whatever the fuck it was, and seeing she wasn’t responding, he slapped her once in the face.

Hard.

“KILL THAT BEAST YE FOOL!”

“What… Glenavon?” Lith stammered coming about and Glen grabbed her in a tight hug, breathing a sigh of relief.

“It’s okay. You’re fine.” He whispered in her pointy ear and felt her relaxing in his arms.

“HAVE YE LOST YER—”

His voice was cut off suddenly, with a gurgling sound. Glen remembered the crossbow bolts and turned slowly, pushing Lith back. A man wearing a hooded cape, tight-fit black leather armour underneath, was kneeling over the wounded ruffian. The dead ruffian. He smacked his thin lips once, slightly pointy chin showing in the light of the half-out torch. Glen noticed the bloody blade in his hand and went for his sword alarmed.

“There’s no need for that,” The newcomer said, singsong voice carrying so many accents it was impossible to pinpoint its origin. “This man was a wanted criminal, working for the Cofols.”

It made sense, Glen thought.

“Gratitude for the assistance…”

“Name’s Larn,” The man introduced himself readily. “I’m a bounty hunter of sorts.”

Glen let out the breath he was holding. He could hear more people shouting in the distance. Voices and lights coming from the bridge. Lith behind him, pulled the hood over her head, under Larn’s intense scrutiny. Had he seen her? Glen wondered.

“It appears there’s a search for you, milord,” The bounty hunter said and stood up, but not before meticulously cleaning his blade on the dead ruffian’s clothes. “As luck would have it, I was here at the right time,” He pressed his lips into the thinnest of smiles. “Your secret, is safe with me.”