The seamaid came out of the water well past midnight and crept through the trees until the firelight was only a glow between the trunks.
She stayed low, one hand braced against the bark, and she watched.
She did not watch with her eyes.
Eyes were for prey and for the surface of things.
What she watched with was the other sense, the one that had kept her alive in a world that had been emptied out of her kind, the one that let her read a living thing the way a human read a face.
She read their souls.
Nyobin came first, small and thin and flickering, barely a mouthful.
Then Haegun, the black wolf, low and slow and steady, the magic of something that had been alive a long time without ever needing much of it.
Then Baegun beside her, a shade brighter.
Then Ozin, thin and coiled and strange, magic moving through him in a way she did not recognize.
Then the pale dryad, deep and cold and endless, her reserve running down into a forest somewhere far off and drawing from it without ever spending it down.
Then the white haired one, sharp and hot and bright enough to make the seamaid’s gills flutter.
Then Groova, so much larger than the white one that the comparison was almost funny.
Then the red haired one, larger still, broad and burning.
And then the human.
The seamaid stopped breathing.
His reserve did not end where the others ended.
It did not stop at the edge of his skin or the edge of the fire or the edge of the clearing.
It rose.
It went up past the treetops and kept going, up into the dark where the moon sat, and past that, and it spread out over the whole clearing in a slow tide that touched every living thing in it and did not thin out at all.
The wolves were standing inside it.
The dryads were breathing it.
She could feel it on her skin from 60 meters away, warm and thick, and it did not have a bottom.
She had never seen anything like it.
Not in the deep water, not in the drowned caves where the old ones used to gather before they were gone.
There had been powerful things in her memory, but memory was a liar, and this was real and it was standing in front of a fire eating fish.
She needed it.
That was the simple truth of it.
She was the last of her kind in this water and there was nobody left to make more of her kind with, and a child made from a small magic would be a small thing that would die in its first winter.
A child made from that reserve would be strong.
It would live.
It would not be alone.
She took a step forward.
The spore hit the inside of her nose like a fist.
She sneezed so hard her whole body convulsed, doubling her over with her hands clamped over her face, and then she sneezed again, and again, each one rattling her teeth, tears streaming down her cheeks while she scrubbed at her nose with the heel of her palm.
Whatever was in that air did not want her here.
It was in her throat now, in her gills, and it stung, and the more she tried to breathe through it the worse it got.
She backed off, growling low in her chest, and glared at the clearing through watering eyes.
That plant.
She could feel it sitting there in the middle of everything, fat and green and pleased with itself, throwing its poison into the air in a steady cloud.
If it were gone, she could walk in.
If it were gone, she could take what she needed.
She cast around the treeline for something to throw.
She gathered a handful of them, tested their weight, and hurled them one after another, but the plant was planted too far inside the barrier, and every stick fell short, landing in the grass like a bad joke.
She threw 6 of them.
She threw a rock and it landed in the fire and made everyone look up, which made her duck behind a trunk and hold very still until they went back to eating.
She threw a dead branch and it caught in a bush and stayed there.
She stood in the dark and stared at the plant and stewed.
Then she found the log.
It had fallen years ago and it was enormous, a length of trunk twice her height and too heavy for anything with arms.
She got behind it, dug her heels in, and rolled it out of the undergrowth one straining turn at a time, her teeth bared, her whole body braced against it.
When she had it out in the open she got her arms around it and lifted it up onto her shoulder with a grunt that turned into a snarl.
She took 3 running steps and heaved.
The log went up, turned over once in the air, and came down on the plant like a hammer.
The trunk snapped.
The plant flattened.
Green pulp sprayed out across the grass in both directions and the cloud in the air stuttered and thinned, and the seamaid did not wait to admire her work.
She turned and ran, and the sound of 800 pounds of wood hitting the ground rolled across the clearing behind her.
The wolves heard it before anyone else did.
Haegun came up off the ground with a snarl already in her throat, her fur standing along her spine, her yellow eyes fixed on the treeline.
She took 4 strides and was gone, swallowed by the dark, running flat out with her nose down and her teeth bared.
Baegun went the other way.
He hit Gen in the side hard enough to knock the fish out of his hand, and then he was pushing him, shoulder against Gen’s hip, herding him off toward the edge of the clearing.
“Hey! Hey, what are you doing? Baegun!” Gen stumbled twice before he got his feet under him and let himself be herded.
“Okay! Okay, I’m walking, stop shoving me!”
Baegun drove him all the way to the ruined plant and then stood there panting, looking down at it.
Everyone else arrived a few seconds behind.
Groova first, then Asp, then Nøx, with Vyxia and Ozin and Nyobin trailing after.
The plant was destroyed.
Not trampled.
Not eaten.
Flattened, under a fallen trunk that had not fallen there on its own, with the trunk itself split in 2 where it had hit.
“Something did this,” Gen said.
He crouched down and looked at the wreckage, at the fresh scrape marks in the dirt, at the drag trail leading back toward the treeline.
“Something carried a log over here and smashed it on purpose.”
Out in the woods, Haegun was hussing, straight up hawking them down, mayor of huss valley type levels of dashing.
HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS HUSS (huss valley resident?)
The seamaid heard it behind her and ran faster.
She had the speed.
She did not have the footing.
Haegun came through the trees above the ground, leaping branch to branch, 4 legs landing and pushing and landing again, and every time the seamaid glanced back the wolf was closer than she had been the time before.
The gap between them shrank from 30 meters to 20 and then to 10, and the seamaid stopped looking back at all and just pumped her legs and drove for the water with everything she had left.
Haegun hit her from above.
350 pounds of black wolf came down on the seamaid’s back and took her off her feet, driving her into the dirt with a shriek that turned into a snarl when Haegun’s teeth sank into her shoulder.
Blood sprayed. Get faster updates on g.com.
The seamaid twisted, her claws raking up through Haegun’s neck, tearing 4 long lines through the fur and into the skin, and Haegun flinched just enough for the seamaid to wrench herself free.
She did not look back again.
She ran for the water and dove, and Haegun was right behind her, launching herself off the bank with her jaws open, and she missed.
Her teeth closed on nothing.
The seamaid was already under, kicking down into the dark and gone.
Haegun hit the water past her knees and stood there, snarling at the surface, shocked and furious and bleeding down her neck.
She barked at the water.
Then she barked again.
Then again, and again, and again, pacing the bank, snapping at the ripples, circling back to stare at where the shape had been and then barking at it some more.
Gen and the others came crashing through the trees.
“Haegun? Haegun!” He slowed as he reached the bank and saw her standing in the shallows, the red running down her neck, her yellow eyes wild.
“What’s up, girl? You oka-”
Haegun whipped around and bit his hand.
Not hard enough to break bone.
Hard enough to hurt, and hard enough to mean it.
Gen yanked his arm back with a hiss, staring at the red dent of teeth already darkening across the back of his fingers while Haegun crouched low and snarled at him.
Groova’s whole body changed.
Her claws came out and her shoulders dropped and she started forward, and Gen had one second to think oh no before Baegun was in front of her, planted across the path with his head down.
“Baegun, move,” Gen said, still holding his hand.
Baegun did not move.
He stood there between them, facing Haegun, and then he walked toward her slowly, one step at a time, his head low and his tail still.
Haegun lunged at him.
Not a real bite, but close, her teeth snapping 10 centimeters from his face.
Baegun did not flinch and he did not stop walking.
She lunged again, then again, false charging him 3 times in a row with her hackles up and her growl rattling in her throat, and Baegun took every one of them, and on the 4th he was close enough to touch noses with her, and he did.
Haegun’s growl broke apart.
She went quiet.
Then she made a low, miserable sound and pressed her muzzle into his neck and let him stand over her.
Gen watched that, then looked down at his hand and winced.
“What the hell is her problem today?” he asked, flexing his fingers and finding all of them still working.
“She’s never like this. She’s standoffish with everyone, sure, but she’s never bitten me. She’s never bitten anyone.”
Groova had stopped in her tracks halfway through her first step.
She was staring past Gen now, past Baegun, at Haegun in the shallows, crouched low with her own eyes narrowed to slits and her head tilted like she was listening to something far away.
“Black one has many soul,” she said.
Gen turned.
“Wait, what?”
“It is not one soul,” Groova said slowly.
“It is many. Small ones.” She tilted her head the other way.
“They are very loud.”
Nøx had gone very still.
He looked at Haegun standing in the water with blood running down her neck, then at Baegun planted in front of her, then back at Haegun, and something clicked behind his golden eyes.
“Oh my gods,” he said.
“She’s pregnant.”