Venthrey: Part 3

I've never met a hag that could break the Rules. But I've never met a Rule a hag couldn't break. - The Bastard of Crow and Spider (Banesgrowth's Dictums of War).

It took five minutes of walking to be far enough away from the encampment so that Evan could not hear the cries of Rubinin. His legs were weak and eyes were burning. Once he knew he was free from the encampment he dropped to his knees, hands buried in the leaf litter of the forest floor. Two years worth of memories came flooding back to him in an instant. Everything he had had to do since the challenge of the Greywitch Forest, every opportunity he did not hesitate to take advantage of. Everything he put Rubinin through, the lies, the cruelty. He had changed, these years in Venthrey. He did not know how long he had spent crying, regretting, mourning. Eventually, Evan continued on.

It was a long trek through the forest. The various snakes that lunged at Evan as he crossed the forest were quickly dispatched. Two years in this snake-ridden forest had made Evan's reflexes sharper than he every could have imagined, he drew his sword and removed heads before the tails were fully off the ground. Snake flesh and blood had been a large source of food and nutrition for both Evan and Rubinin. The nature of the Forest as a structure meant these snakes would appear and replenish to no end, for better or for worse.

After nearly an hour, Evan finally arrived. He was worried he had forgotten the spot, it was a long time since he had been here. A fallen trunk laid against a moss-covered boulder, it's hollowed end covered in moss and mulch. Evan teared away at the suture he had created, exposing the innards of the trunk to the sunlight once again. Within the trunk were two secrets. The first was the large body of a snake, with deep black scales and lifeless red eyes. Several scales had minuscule fey runes carved into them which once glittered with pink energy. Now, they were grey and devoid of magic.

Evan pulled the lifeless body of the snake from the trunk and hefted it onto his shoulder, wrapping around his neck to prevent the tail from dragging along the ground. Once the body was removed, the last secret became revealed. The cage was small and plain, made of fine silver but completely inconspicuous otherwise. Within the cage rested a small bird, grey feathers and a black beak that awoke as soon as Evan grabbed the cage. It immediately begun to sing a song that the forest had not heard in years. It was intended, Evan believed, to be melodious and comforting, but all it did was make him sink further into his grief.

With the cage in one hand and the snake's body drooped across his opposite shoulder, Evan stumbled to return to the encampment. On his return, no snakes attacked him. Nothing leaped from the leaf litter nor from the branches overhead. He was interrupted by nothing on his journey other than his own thoughts.

For two years had these secrets plagued his mind. There was not a day where his internal map to them drive him sleepless, as if they were calling out to him from the other side of the forest. That would stop, Evan hoped, now. Would that calling be replaced, would his guilt ease, or worsen. He'd debated this countless times before, wept over his indecision and desire to do what was write but that human instinct, that drive to live and survive, always persevered and convinced him not to. That instinct was silent today, he had a chance, capacity for freedom he had not known for too many years. So he indulged that feeling, he let that feeling carry him through his guilt, had it propel him every step through the forest, with the weight of that large snake weighing him down.

He was exhausted once he returned to the encampment. At the very least, he could no longer hear the sobbing of the Hag. He pushed aside the curtain, which snagged and ripped against a scale on the snake's body. At the sound, Rubinin shot up, razing her knife in the direction of the opening.

"Evan?" She asked hopefully. Her wrinkled face was stained by tears but she had a toothy grin as she awaited a response.

"Aye, Ruby. It's me." The Hag's face became quizzical at Evan's tone. He draped the snake body across a rock beside the entrance and placed the cage in front of Rubinin. Hearing the sound, Rubinin reached out in front of her and recoiled at the touch of silver, a puff of steam coming from her hand.

"Silver, Calweather? What is this?" There was fear in her voice again. Evan new that it would not fade. He had scared the Hag, she knew she was helpless and she knew that Evan knew it as well.

Taking a moment to size up the Hag, the mockingbird ruffled its feathers and let out a couple of notes of birdsong. At this, Rubinin gasped loudly, clutching her chest with one hand and feeling out the cage with the other, desperately looking for a latch. Within moments her other hand joined in the search for an opening, steam rising as the smell of burning flesh began to fill the room.

"Rubinin, stop." Evan sighed, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Ah!" Rubinin cried as she pulled her blistering hands away, clutching them against her skin and biting on her lips to suppress her desire to yell. "What have you done, Calweather? Get this out of here, Akkana will find this..."

"No, she won't," Evan began, taking Rubinin's hands and wrapping them with fabric he tore from his garb. "She won't." He sighed. He perceived the quizzical expression of Rubinin once more and took the cage away from her, laying it against the rock wall of the interior. 

He then grabbed the draped snake body and dropped it before her. She reached in front of her with far more trepidation this time. She recoiled instinctively when she felt the scaled lining of the corpse. She shifted herself back against the wall. Once, after a few seconds, she was satisfied it was nothing more than a corpse, she returned to a state of relative calm.

"You have brought... dinner, Calweather?" The internal debate, the questions Rubinin could not bring herself to ask were obvious even to Evan. She returned to feeling the scales, the form of the body with careful insight.

"It is a large beast," she said as her fingers brushed over its circumference. "Larger than I thought could be." Her fingers eventually dotted across a runed scale and stopped to feel it out with more fervor. "Fey Runes...?" Her voice drifted as she read through touch. Soon, her brow rose and she let out a hiss.

"Akkana's beast! The bitch has sent..."

"No." Evan interrupted, "this is Akkana, Ruby."

Evan watched Rubinin process the information, the questions stopped at the tip of her tongue, the way she inspected the runes and beast with her blistered hands. 

"No..." She whined, "no. But, how? What is this Calweather?"

Evan grabbed the cage and sat cross-legged before Rubinin. He had practiced recounting this hundreds of times. There were a dozen variations of the lies he would tell, choice words to spare himself from Rubinin's ire or loss of favour. Sometimes he had planned showing the snake without the cage, sometimes the cage without the snake. Today, he had no energy for anything but the truth.

"Your sister," Evan began, "lied to you, to bring you here."

Rubinin sat back against the wall, thumbing a scale she had removed between her thumb and forefinger.

"She didn't want to challenge you," Evan took a deep breath. "She wanted to kill you."