Chapter 366: The Child of Blood Fang

Second Mother looked at Plum curiously, “How well do you really know your friend, Stryg?”

“I know him well enough and he wouldn’t have killed four Mothers,” Plum said defensively. “He idolizes the Mothers. He’d never hurt any of you!”

“No need to get angry, child. You are not the one in danger,” Second smiled tiredly, “If First Mother found out I told an outsider like you about any of this, she would have my tongue.”

“But you’re the Second Mother—”

“—And I’m also First’s best friend. Neither reason would stop her from cutting out my tongue for the secrets I’m about to tell you.”

“Then why tell me?”

“Because you claimed to be Stryg’s best friend.”

Plum bit her lip in confusion, “I don’t know what you’re getting at. What do you want from me…?”

“To simply listen.”

“Okay…” she said hesitantly.

Second looked away and stared into the distance as if seeing something that was no longer there. “In those days First and I held different ordinal names. For clarity’s sake, I will simply refer to us by the names we had back then, Fifth and Sixth.”

Plum nodded in understanding.

“…Did you know Stryg was born quite sickly?” Second said in a quiet reminiscent voice. “We didn’t think he would make it through the night. I still remember it as clearly as I see you now… The baby cried and cried, gasping for breath. I thought his little lungs were going to give out.”

Second continued in a voice barely above a whisper, “It was an ominous autumn night. The Mother Moon’s silver light did not grace the sky. There was no one to pray to for guidance, there was only darkness and the unknown. Fifth and I were new to the sacred path of the Mothers, we were inexperienced. Yet none of us, not even the First Mother of that time knew what to do in the face of such an… unforeseen circumstance.”

“Stryg’s mom died in labor…” Plum recalled in a sorrowful voice.

“…Yes. She was like a sister to me,” Second’s expression grew tired, “I was afraid we’d lose the baby as well. He was so small, he could hardly breathe. Besides Fifth and I, the rest of the Mothers thought it would be best if the sickly child would simply be put to rest. Even worse, some of the hunters standing guard outside agreed, despite it not being their call to make. One of the hunters went as far as to say the baby was too weak, even if Stryg lived through the night he wouldn’t survive his first frigid winter.”

“No…” Plum mumbled in a broken voice. Even at birth Stryg had struggled to survive. The thought pained Plum more than she thought it would.

“That hunter would soon regret his words,” Second smiled to herself. “I’ll never forget what happened next. Fifth stumbled out of the birthing room, rage in her eyes. She beat the hunter so badly that he died of his injuries that very night. The other hunters said not a word after that.”

“Still,” Second bit her lip. “Even with Fifth’s… display, the facts remained. The baby was sick and was not long for this world. First and Third Mother decided it was time to lay the newborn to rest. But Fifth and I would have none of that. And neither would Jahn.”

“The chieftain?” Plum furrowed her brow.

“He wasn’t the chieftain back then, he was one of the hunters who had been standing guarding that night. He was the only hunter who had stayed silent the entire time, he hadn’t said a single word. But when he saw what the Mothers were going to do to the baby, the three of us acted as one.”

“I held off the Mothers and Jahn fought off his fellow hunters, while Fifth took the child and escaped into the woods. I am not sure what happened after that, but when the sun rose, Fifth had returned to the village, exhausted, but with the baby in her arms, alive. Stryg was still sickly and he struggled to breathe, but he was no longer coughing.”

“The three of you saved Stryg’s life,” Plum said with quiet realization. There was a new glint of admiration in her eyes for the goblin Mother sitting next to her.

“At what price?” Second muttered.

Plum frowned, “What do you mean?”

“Stryg grew up… different from the other children. He was small, scrawny, the runt of the pack. And he was quiet, too quiet for any child. While the other children wanted to play, Stryg always preferred to keep to himself. He rarely even spoke, save with Fifth and I.”

“I found his behavior odd, but most of the Mothers found it outright disturbing. And the way he looked at the other children,” Second shook her head, “There was no warmth behind those lilac eyes, it was as if he didn’t care what might happen to any of them.”

Second clasped her hands, “We raise the children to work together, to rely on one another, to create bonds with each other, but Stryg always refused to participate. One day, First Mother had enough of his odd behavior. She admonished him and slapped him across the cheek. Stryg cried, like any child would. And that was that… or so we thought.”

Second closed her eyes and shivered. “The next morning we found First Mother’s body sprawled across the village square. Her insides had been ripped out and spread across the ground in a bloody mess. Only her face was left untouched, save for five profound gashes where a clawed hand had struck her deeply across the cheek.”

Plum paled in horror, “What…?”

“The gash marks were too deep for any goblin, let alone a child’s but I think we all knew at that moment who had been responsible for First Mother’s death. You see, everyone mourned the death of our Matriarch that day, everyone but one little child, who simply stared at First’s body with a small smile on his lips.”

“Are you saying Stryg somehow brutally killed your matriarch?” Plum frowned. “A child? Are you kidding me? It had to clearly have been some kind of intruder!”

“Our hunters checked the area, over and over. There were no footprints, no sign of invasion, there were no intruders.”

“That can’t be…” Plum muttered. “Stryg couldn’t have done it.”

Second shrugged, “Two months later the new ‘First Mother’ accused Stryg of doing just that. She accused a six-year-old of murder. Stryg didn’t respond, he just stared at her, curiously. She threatened to flog him if he didn’t tell her the truth. Stryg said nothing. In the end, she didn’t follow through with her threat, but the next morning her body was found tied to a rope, hanging upside down from the Moon Hall’s roof. Her back had been stripped to the bone as if by endless lashes and her face was set in a frozen expression of terror and pain. Guess who was the only one in the tribe who didn’t seem surprised or even saddened by her death?”

“No, no, that can’t be possible,” Plum shook her head adamantly. “He must have just been in shock.”

“He was smiling. The boy was smiling.”

“Stryg couldn’t have killed her! He was a child. How could a child have even carried an adult onto a rooftop? Someone else must have done it.”

“We searched for evidence of just that, but we found none, not even a footprint. There was nothing. And then… the next two First Mothers died in similar gruesome manners in the following two years. Four Mothers dead in two years. Dead. It was unheard of. And they weren’t the only victims. There were several other adults as well, even a few kids. Each of them at one point or another had picked on Stryg for being different and each one of them was found dead not long after.”

“Stryg could never have done that,” Plum whispered.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But it didn’t change how the tribe saw him. A child born on a moonless night, a bad omen. A curse sent by the Mother Moon to punish us for our misdeeds of the past or perhaps the future.”

Plum’s eyes widened in horrible realization, “Your tribe doesn’t hate Stryg because he’s different… they hate Stryg because they’re afraid of him.”

Second nodded grimly, “After the four Mothers died the title of ‘First’ fell on Fifth, our current First Mother. When she became our matriarch the first thing she did was order the tribe to stop directly threatening Stryg in the hopes that the killings might stop. And they did, for the most part. Eventually, as Stryg grew older the killings stopped altogether. But that didn’t stop the way the people looked at Stryg or the vile words they whispered behind his back. It especially didn’t stop the other children from ostracizing him, even though oddly enough none of the children remembered the gruesome murders.”

“Yet they still ostracized him? Why?” Plum mumbled in shock. “Why did you all shun an innocent child?”

“I don’t know if he was innocent,” Second mused. “However, I for one did not shun him, nor did Jahn or our current First Mother. In fact, First was the only one who was never afraid to give the boy a well deserved beating whenever he did something he wasn’t supposed to, which was more often than not, mind you.”

“But I suppose you’re right, drow girl,” Second admitted. “Stryg was shunned by the rest of the tribe. It didn’t help that the boy was weak, it only made things worse. Not that he seemed to mind being alone. He spent most of his childhood outside the village grounds, wandering by himself in the woods.”

“Wait, you let a child go out there by himself!?” Plum said in disbelief.

Second smirked wryly, “The boy had a penchant for sneaking out of the village. The first few times we were worried, but he always found his way back, unharmed. Although several times he did come back very late in the night or even the next morning. When that happened First Mother would send out some hunters to find him and on one occasion they discovered something very odd.”

“What did they find?” Plum whispered apprehensively.

“The hunters found Stryg walking down the trail surrounded by a pack of wolves, but the wolves weren’t trying to eat him. Stryg was talking to them and they were actually responding to him in a mix of barks and growls. Can you believe it?”

Plum suddenly remembered the encounter they had with the wolves a few days ago at the edge of the forest. Stryg hadn’t said much about it, but now she wondered if there was more to the story than he had let on. And if so, did that mean there was some truth to Second Mother’s words?

A cold shiver ran down Plum’s back.

“It wasn’t the first nor last time Stryg was spotted with wolves outside the village walls,” Second said. “Even if you don’t believe he had a hand in all those deaths, the truth is the boy was odd, that much was certain. At one point, when he was about 10 or so he began drawing strange symbols on the ground with a twig. The other kids found it bizarre and made fun of him, but a few of the adults realized what they were. Arcane Sigils. The boy was writing countless words in the Arcana Form! How? When did he learn the language of magic? Who taught him? No one!”

Plum shook her head, “That’s not true. I know this story, I think. Sigte taught him to write on the dirt.”

“This again?” Second clicked her tongue. “I told you already, Sigte is a bloodrite that has been forbidden for centuries. There has never been a goblin by the name of Sigte among our tribe, or any tribe for that matter.”

“Then maybe I’m just remembering the name wrong. Stryg told me Sigte was once a hunter from another tribe. He taught Stryg how to read and write by drawing words on the dirt. It started after Sigte saved him from a dragon.”

“A dragon?” Second mumbled thoughtfully. “There was a time Stryg claimed to have seen a dragon with purple scales that shined like amethyst…”

“Yes, exactly! Stryg tried to follow the other hunters into the woods but he got lost and fell down a hill next to a pond. He hurt his leg and couldn’t move. He cried for help and unintentionally woke up the dragon sleeping in the pond. The dragon almost ate him, but in the end, it flew away. Sigte found him afterwards and carried him back to the village, right?”

“I do remember the story and the day it happened,” Second said slowly. “Stryg did sneak out of the village to try and follow the hunters that day. He did get lost and he did twist his ankle, but Stryg didn’t return to the village with a hunter… It was a wolf, larger than any I had ever seen. A frost wolf, I think, but it was even larger than them. It had pale white hair and startling silver eyes. When I saw the enormous creature I thought it might devour our whole village, but then I spotted Stryg sleeping on top of its head. The wolf gently laid the boy at the edge of our village and then went back into the forest without even a growl. It was one of the most surreal moments I’ve ever witnessed.”

“That’s… What? That doesn’t make sense,” Plum frowned. None of this made sense. Was this woman telling the truth? Had Stryg been lying since the day they had met? She glanced at the blue goblin in the distance. He was still dancing and laughing with Srixa around the fire pits without a care in the world.

Second followed her gaze, “The boy seems to have changed. He’s grown stronger since I last saw him. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”

“You think he is a threat…”

“Don’t misunderstand me, I care for the boy, I helped raise him, but death follows Stryg wherever he goes. We Sylvan folk are not unaccustomed to death by no means, but death around Stryg is unnatural. He is unnatural.”

“That’s not true!” Plum glared at her.

“Isn’t it? On his first mission outside the village more than half his party died in a cave of serpents, but he somehow miraculously survived. And now he's back three years later, after killing everything left in that cave. Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me, in the last three years, how many others have died around him? How many lives has he directly been responsible for ending?”

Byrel’s smile flashed across Plum’s memory. The agonizing cries of her mother as the shades devoured her alive still echoed in her dreams. Plum looked away in shame, unable to meet the older woman’s gaze.

“More than you’d like to admit, it seems,” Second whispered. “I suggest you tread carefully around Stryg, drow girl.”

Second Mother stood up and walked back to the Moon Hall. Plum sat on the grass, alone, staring at the blue goblin dancing in the firelight.

“Who are you, Stryg…?” she wondered worriedly.