Water dripped down from the ceiling of the shack, landing delicately on the young girl's crimson cheek. It was raining again, though fortunately it was not acid rain this time, and the rain seemed determined to alert her to its presence. The next drop landed on her eyelid, making her flinch. She grumbled and inched closer to the fireplace from where she lay on her straw cushion on the floor. But the leak was worse there, and a steady stream of water poured onto her face.
"Ack!" she sputtered, sitting up abruptly and tossing the blanket off of her. The torn rag flopped unceremoniously into another small puddle. The girl looked around; thankfully her stuffed bear/battle companion Hubert had been spared the soggy fate.
So that's my task for today, she thought, picking up Hubert and hugging him close, I'm fixing the roof.
She leaped nimbly over to the door to the training room and peered in. No intruders. No signs of a lurking devil. But she didn't take any chances as she just barely reached her hand into the room to grab her quarterstaff, take it back out, and slammed the door behind her hand.
"Hana…" a deep, almost rasping voice echoed out of the other room, "you are awake?"
"Yeah, I am," Hana replied, "The roof's leaking. I'm going to fix it."
There was no reply, but Hana could tell her caretaker was not too pleased with the prospect of her going outside. However, seeing as that she was the only one light enough to fix the roof without breaking it, he had no choice but to let her go.
She searched quickly for her belt and her shoulder strap and put them on with practiced efficiency. It's all she ever wore; black ragged dress, belt, strap, hooded cloak. She had no need of much else. This time, though, Minauros had decided to rain while it was sweltering, so Hana decided against her cloak. She slid her quarterstaff through the strap on her back and placed Hubert gingerly on a dry spot.
"Watch Arkoth for me?" she asked the bear, then nodded his head for him. Hana skittered out the door quickly to search the nearby bog for moss, her clawed feet clicking against the wooden floor. Once she was outside, she leaped into her favorite nearby tree – catching herself with her claws on her feet – and started climbing through the swamp from there.
The rain still pelted down, which made things both easier and more difficult for Hana. It was easier to sneak around in the rain, thereby not disturbing any devils that may be lurking nearby, but it also makes climbing a bit more perilous. Thankfully, her favorite peat patch wasn't too far away and she only needed a few pieces.
She landed nimbly in the little patch, well-worn with markings of her own claws, and started digging, keeping her pointed scarlet ears perked for any danger. Hana's fingers worked to find moist moss, but her mind was racing, as it always did. She thought about her positioning, how vulnerable she would be if she were attacked, how quickly she could draw her staff or leap into a tree. She kept sniffing the air, trying to find a foreign scent through the rain. Thankfully, she didn't.
It took some time for her to gather enough peat to be satisfied before she bounced back the way she came through the trees. This time, though, she leapt straight from the tree onto the roof to save herself from having to climb up the walls. She landed with a squish and began to carefully feel around for leaks. There weren't too many so she patched up little spots that felt weak as she slowly made her way to where she knew the big leaks were over by the chimney. Hana kept low to the surface of the roof, ruefully regretting not bringing her cloak with her in order to disguise the bright red of her skin, and inspected the area with the most leaks. The reeds and brush covering the home had moved, and some of the peat and mud had been pressed in, though by what she didn't know. Either way, she busied herself braiding new supports for the peat she had gathered and lacing them into place before rearranging the newly gathered moss into the bed. She repeated the process another two times before replacing the brush and wood that covered the roof and addressing the smaller leak that had initially caused her to stir. That one did not require so much attention, but it did take her a moment to locate.
Just as she had finished stuffing the little hole with moss, she picked up a scent on the rain; a reek of evil, greed, and mold was approaching.
"Arkoth!" she cried as she leapt off the roof into her tree, then down to the ground, "Something's coming!" No sooner had she said it than the towering mass of armor himself burst through the front door and threw her cloak at her.
"South," was all he said before he drew his sword and trudged through the rain to the north. Obediently, she put on her cloak and scampered in the opposite direction of where her caretaker had headed, still sniffing urgently and with her ears perked.
Another thicket of trees she had made herself familiar with - this one ripe with small creatures for hunting - hid her newest route as she wound her way through the lifted roots and the musty bog, trying to hide her scent as much as possible. She had lost the scent of the intruders in the rain, but she could faintly hear the click and scrape of their claws on the door and floor of the cottage.
Crawling through the muck, she found one of her hiding spots; the hollowed out trunk of an old tree hid her well as she waited for the danger to pass. Hana listened carefully through the sound of the pouring rain, but as the precipitation lessened, so did the sounds of the intruders. It slowed to a drizzle before she could faintly hear the clanks of Arkoth returning to the cabin and then a HUGE uproar break out. As much as she wanted to rush and see what was happening, she had been instructed never to interrupt, and she knew it would be dangerous for her to do so.
She heard the hissing of devils and the squishing of their feet as Arkoth chased them off, but after several minutes, she did not hear Arkoth return.
Hana waited. Still no clanking.
The rain turned to hail.
No Arkoth.
An hour had passed without any noise from the cottage, worrying and comforting Hana at the same time, so carefully she slipped back to her home. Gingerly, she pushed the door open, her staff at the ready. The foul odor of greedy devils permeated the air, making her scowl, but other than the furniture being in disarray, nothing looked taken.
Her heart leapt into her throat, though, when she realized two things.
The first was that Hubert was nowhere to be seen.
The second was that she could hear new voices and smell new smells - many of them - through the hail.
Slamming the door, she bolted for her trusty tree to the west, climbing higher and further into the leaves than she normally did. The beings approaching did not smell nor sound like any devil she had encountered, and Arkoth had taught her to study new things before deciding on danger. Therefore, Hana perched herself in a particularly leafy branch and hid, sheltered from the hail and rain, waiting for the new entities to approach.
Her first thought when they finally came into view was that she had never seen anything like them in the flesh. And that's what they were - flesh. Mortals. Not glowing souls nor stinking devils, but a group of mismatched mortals with a grey beast of some sort following them.
Her second was that nearly all of their voices sounded achingly familiar.
She watched as they carefully entered her home after inspecting it to the best of their abilities, she assumed. Silently begging for Arkoth to show up, she listened closely as they rummaged through her home. One of the male voices that she did remember read out one of the wanted posters every devil possessed (eager for the reward), and his surprise and hesitation made her realize that they really weren't from around here. A female voice warned everyone to stay away from something shiny in the fire, then breathed a sigh of relief when she revealed that it had been a teddy bear in there.
So Hubert wasn't taken, Hana confirmed silently, smiling with relief. All of her other possessions had been stolen or destroyed at one point or another. Hubert was all she had left other than her clothes and her staff.
The group kept exploring her home, even going into Arkoth's room - Bold move, she smirked - and going through his books. They can read, she thought wistfully. Arkoth had tried to teach her, and she could read certain words and sounds, but nothing like what was in his books. And since they were constantly working to survive, she hadn't had a lot of time to practice in recent memory.
Hana sniffed the air again. They didn't smell dangerous. Their voices were comforting and familiar. And she was… scared, as much as she hated to admit it. It had been over an hour. Arkoth usually came back after a raid, especially if he didn't tell her he was going Mammon-hunting that day. What if something had happened? Did he go to Jangling Hiter? What if the seals had failed to protect him? She couldn't go find him on her own, that much she knew for sure.
She peeked through the leaves and met the eyes of the yellow-haired human with the grey beast through the door, which the human immediately shut. Smart, but not helpful. Hana sighed and scurried around the cottage to peek into the window on the east side from a tree that she liked over there. She could hear the mortals panicking slightly as she waited for one of them to look out the window.
The male who had spoken earlier with the wanted poster caught her eyes and jumped in surprise. In the activity, Hana pulled the hood of her cloak over her face to hide her glowing eyes as she ventured back to her first tree. She heard them debate what to do, but they decided on doing "the stupidest thing" and slowly they creeped out of the cottage.
Hana finally got a good look at them all. A grey elf with long purple hair and clothing that would be very difficult to hunt in, a half-elf with greens and browns in his hair and clothing that would make him prime for living in Minauros, a yellow-haired human clutching tight to the grey beast, a small gnome with a lute strapped to his back and a smile on his face, a stocky dwarf with a shield nearly as big as he on his back and with a stoic expression on his face, a black-skinned Drow who looked thoroughly unimpressed with the surroundings, and a golden dragon filed out of her cottage. She breathed in carefully, her fingers ready to grab her staff if necessary, though she knew very well that she probably wouldn't stand a chance against them anyways.
Mortals. In Minauros. She shook her head.
For now, I am not Hana. I cannot trust them. I am… Mori.
And she spoke.