Heroes of Magic and Might
Chapter 22 – Lost in the woods
…
The wolf prowled through the underbrush with fierce determination. Lesser beasts fled before the pronounced pad of his padded foot as he made a large circle, walking it continuous as he prowled. None would enter his circle. The pack would be protected.
The pack, as it were, slept at the foot of a large tree, hidden behind some bushes speckled with tart green berries. The little vampire dozed lightly beneath her umbrella, the owl on her shoulder dozed even lighter. Only the fairy and the wizard slept deeply, only the fairy by choice.
The small squirrel, that was in fact a wizard, was exhausted in a way he never had been before. The drug, he discovered, did not leave his system upon transformation, and his much smaller body required much less effort to show its effects. It was only fortunate he hadn't tried the change while the drug prevailed his system; it probably would have killed him.
Possible he would still die; the chase was on in earnest.
Rosebud had easily outpaced the Ashe during the night, but in the daylight, she was greatly hampered, being forced to rest and give them time to catch up.
Here the forest was their friend. Thick with trees and thicker with thorns, it would slow the pursuit if not stop it, and it would not stop it. Their best chance was to move as soon as possible, wind through the forest both quick and erratic.
If they were lucky, getting lost in the woods would be the least of their worries.
…Meanwhile, back at Hogwarts
"How long will you be?" asked Dumbledore.
"Not long," said Hagrid, adjusting the strap on his pack, "no more'n two weeks less sumfin happens."
"I pray you an uneventful trip."
"Well, not too uneventful."
The old wizard smiled at his large friend. His deep concern hid like a timid child behind that smile. He didn't fear for the big man, not really, yet at the same time he couldn't help but feel he was saying goodbye for the last time.
He really was getting old if he was thinking things like that.
And yet, he couldn't help thinking it as he watched his friend walk away, his massive stride and eager pace eating up the distance till he melted into the tree line.
"Farewell my friend," he mumbled to the air. "Try not to get lost."
…Lost, who's lost?
"We are not lost!"
The Fairy tinkled something that sounded very accusatory as she floated alongside the vampire.
"To say we are lost would imply we had any idea where we were going in the first place," the little vampire said primly, stepping lightly over the rotten remnants of a log.
Strictly speaking they weren't lost, or perhaps it could be said they'd been lost since the moment they stepped through the portal. Either way, it amounted to the same thing.
Glancing down as she walked, she found the squirrel was still sound asleep in her pocket, his big eyes closed as silent snores whistled between his teeth. It worried her, but there was nothing she could do about it but keep walking and hope he woke up.
The wolf, walking ahead, stopped suddenly. Sniffing the air, it whined, looking back the direction they'd come. Wondering at the peculiar reaction she consciously opened her own senses and discovered a surprise.
There was a slight breeze blowing at their back. So slight she hadn't noticed, but he had.
"Good boy," she said patting the wolf, his tongue lolling happily.
The scent that had stopped him was vaguely familiar, but she knew what it was without question. The Ashe were getting closer.
"Come on. Let's pick up the pace."
If she could keep distance between them until the sun set, she might have a fighting chance. Getting caught under the scornful eye of flame would be less optimal.
"Maybe there's a swamp around here somewhere. That'd help."
…Did I say we were lost
Muddy, mucky, marshy mire. The smell of salt wafted like an anvil shoved up their nostrils. It was an important task they'd been given, an adventure even, but like so many adventures the adversity presented really stank.
"I think we're lost."
"We can't be lost."
"Can't we? Oh good, I was worried for a second."
The odd trio turned in circles. They could still smell the salty marsh, though it was now out of sight. What was also out of sight was the trail they had left on their way to the marsh to collect water.
"I'm sure we came this way," said Dakota.
"I don't recognize any of these trees," said Laurel which earned him a look.
"There are like a million trees. How would you know if you recognized one!"
"That one looks rather memorable," said Wizard, pointing to a bulging twisted horror.
"Definitely don't remember that."
"Uuuuuugh!"
For all her virtue's, patience was not one of them. It's why she and Laurel got along like they did. He was usually quiet and reserved, while she ran headlong into just about any and every situation. She needed him to hold her back and he needed her to drag him along.
Wizard had wormed his way into the group by offering insightful color commentary.
"I say. What a lovely blue bird."
Like that.
"Where'd he come from?" said Dakota.
"Can't be from around here. Looks tropical," observed Laurel.
The bird in question, a bit parrot like in appearance with long trailing tail feathers, sat in a high branch of the twisting horror, looking down at them with eyes like brushed gold.
"Certainly an intelligent looking creature, don't you think?" the lizard mused.
"Maybe he knows how to get back to Hogwarts," said Dakota in jest.
"You think he might?"
"No Wizard, I don't."
"Well, it couldn't hurt to ask, could it?"
She supposed it couldn't and Laurel merely shrugged when the loquacious lizard posed the question to the fancifully feathered fellow.
The bird looked at them, then stroked his beak in a very un-bird like manner. Looking around as he mused, stroking and stroking, then the ah-ha moment, one final nod and the stroking wing straightened, pointing them, ostensibly, toward the castle.
Wizard was quite pleased with this outcome, but Dakota and Laurel could only gape.
"Have we fallen into Wonderland?" Laurel whispered.
"If we have, don't you dare call me Alice," said Dakota, stomping away in the appointed direction, leaving a whole new set of tracks they'd never see again.
…Surprise, you're lost
"Are you sure this is right?"
"The tracks are right there. Open your eyes."
The two Ashe glared, hunter and trapper matching wills as blades were not allowed; though that wasn't typically known to stop stabby violence when push came to shove, or mean word came to wrong look.
"Fine then 'tracker'. There's the print, so where's our prey?"
The print in the mud was heavy and blatant and followed by nothing. For at least twenty feet forward or to either side, nothing.
"Wizardry."
"Oh, do come on."
"I don't see you offering anything better!"
The pair growled and griped at the loss of their quarry, oblivious to the silence around them. Such a silence in the middle of the day when the air should have been full of the scratch and scrabble of tree dwellers dwelling and the constant cacophony of birdsong birding, unthinkable. If either had been paying attention, they would have noticed its strangeness, the excess, the weight.
But they didn't. Caught up in their game of you, no you, the stifling silence crept around them till its position was perfect. The attack came mid-accusation, turning snappish insult to gurgling scream.
The un-assaulted stumbled back, trying to draw her weapon. It failed her in the end, batted aside by a tiny girlish hand as hard and strong as steel. It gripped her by the throat and dragged her down so she was eye to glowing red eye with the tiny monster.
Blood smeared across her doll like face, yet her teeth were immaculate, glistening white as they plunged into the ashen skin. A brief struggle and the body went limp, falling to the ground with a leaden thud. Silence returned.
Rosebud looked at her handiwork, stretching out her tongue, attempting to clean her face. "That wasn't so bad."
Two less now hunted them, but there were more. She caught their scent as soon as she finished cleaning the blood off, and something else. She scowled at the familiar odor, potent and powerful and coming her way.
"Dammit!"
Leaving this curse to hang over the corpses she fled the kill site, not bothering to be discreet. It would do no good, it did not hunt by tracks but by scent, and it had a very powerful nose.
Dashing through bushes and in between trees she heard the telltales of her companions waiting. Shooting through the tree line suddenly she was forced to a skidding halt.
"Whoa!" Her halt, had it come a few seconds later, would have involved a very long drop, and a very wet end.
Stretched out before her a wide ravine cut off her path, a swift white river roaring at the bottom. The wolf nudged her hand, forcing her to focus rather than stare in abject horror.
Looking first right then left, the ravine ran well beyond her sight with no clear way to cross, save the obvious.
"It's times like this I wish I knew how to fly." Though even if she did it wouldn't help her puppy, and she wasn't about to leave him behind. "Alright Harry, time for you to wake up."
Gently she nudged the small squirrel stretched across the wolf's back. She'd sent him along when she made her little ambush, not wishing to see him hurt and hoping he would be awake by the time she caught up.
No such luck.
The squirrel stirred a little under her prodding but refused to rouse. Even as the sound of their enemy grew louder, he would not wake.
Rosebud cursed, stared across the great expanse, "We need to get over there."
The owl and the fairy nodded and proceeded to fly the distance carrying the pack she'd left in their care. The fairy waved from the other side, oblivious to the vampire's glare.
"And how is that supposed to help those of us that can't fly?"
It was a rhetorical question, though if someone could have answered it, she wouldn't have objected.
All questions, rhetorical or otherwise, became moot when a swaggering mass shouldered its way through the brush and into the small clearing at the edge of the ravine. A great puff of hot air escaped its snout when the rider pulled it to a halt.
The Ashe woman smiled down at the vampire and her wolf. It was not a friendly smile, it insinuated.
"You have exactly one chance blood sucker," the woman sneered. "Where is the wizard?"
Right in front of you, but you don't know that apparently.
Intelligence, or the lack thereof, had been the doom of many an army. At a glance, it appeared Harry's animal transformation had not been relayed to those hunting him. So where did that leave her?
The Ashe was a threat, second only to the Caladonian boar she was riding, but they weren't after her. Could she betray the wizard to save her own hide? If she gave Harry up would they let her go?
A wry snort escaped her nostrils. Of course not.
That left her one recourse… jump.
It was a long jump; a long jump of a long jump; the sort of jump that was, at the best of times, difficult to justify. Like faith, you threw yourself out their expecting to be caught and were shocked, SHOCKED, by the abrupt stop at the bottom. Whereas if you threw yourself out not expecting to be caught, ninety nine times out of a hundred you still made an abrupt stop at the bottom, the difference being the lack of surprise, though that didn't make it any less of a shock.
Two hundred feet was beyond her ability even at full strength, and under the withering glare of the setting sun, well, technically it didn't become any less likely.
"I grow impatient child!"
Channeling its rider, the boar took a threatening step forward, driving Rosebud right to the edge, in every sense. She couldn't win the fight, and she couldn't make an escape. The situation was literally hopeless.
The situation changed with a dramatic 'squeak'.
"The hell is that?"
The squirrel stood atop the wolfs head like it were some high mountain peak.
*Dramatic pose*
Looking at the hammy rodent, Rosebud couldn't help a sigh of relief, despite being a vampire and not actually needing to breath, some situations just call for it. "Decided to wake up Harry."
The squirrel became a wizard faster than the Ashe could blink, standing nose to snout with the boar, hands raised in front of its eyes.
"Don't blink."
The brilliant flash lit the world like a second sun and the boar reacted in the only way its tiny brain knew how. Squealing madly, it bucked and flailed, tossing its rider around as it thrashed blindly.
The wizard politely gave it some space, lots of space, grabbing the girl and the wolf and vanishing with the slightest pop.
…I have seen the light
"There it is!"
"Finally!"
Hogwarts, shadowed under the mountains looming behind, glowed like magic in the failing light. To those who had spent hours lost in a forest full of man-eating beasts, so it was assumed, the sight of their castle home filled all three with feelings beyond description.
This did not stop some from trying, "Magnificent! Majestic! Melancholic!... no wait, not that last one. What's another good M word?"
The witch and wizard shared a look and shook their heads.
"Come on. I've had enough adventure for one day," said Dakota.
"I hear that," said Laurel. "Still can't help wondering about that bird though."
"Meh."
"Oh, come on. You can't tell me you're not a little curious."
"The only thing I'm curious about is, did we miss dinner?"
"Oh dear, I hope not," said Wizard, giving up on his quest for a third M in light of this newest revelation.
"Me either," Laurel agreed. "Getting lost is hungry work."
"All we did was walk around a lot," said Dakota.
"Yeah, but you weren't carrying this guy around," said Laurel, jerking his thumb in a certain direction.
Wizard tried to look in that direction but found nothing, except himself. "Oh! I'm this guy!"
Laurel grinned at the lizard's mortification. He didn't really mind carrying him everywhere. The lizard could of course walk but walking upright as he usually preferred was not a means of locomotion he was built for. His short back legs made it more of stroll.
"I don't really mind carrying you," said Laurel.
"That's very kind of you," said the lizard. "I do hate to be an imposition."
"You're not an imposition. I promise, you're not."
…Carry me away
"It was quite the imposition I don't mind telling you, walking around with a squirrel in my pocket. You really did take your sweet time waking up."
Harry smiled at the vampire as she carried on about what an imposition he was. He didn't believe her, not for a second. He knew what it sounded like when people were complaining about him. The little vampire was just blowing off steam. The stress of being hunted had built up over the day, and now that she was safe and he was conscious, she could let it all out.
"Have I mentioned how much I appreciate what you did," he said, cutting her off and drawing out an awkward silence she tried to fill with nervous fidgeting.
She wasn't used to being thanked; he could tell. That had been him not so long ago.
"Yes well, you could stand to show it," she said, trying to get back her momentum. "I spend all day carrying you, maybe you should carry me a while. Yes! Yes, that's it. You should carry me. What do you think of that?"
I think it's a weak bluff, that's what he thought. I also think now is a good time for you to learn not to bluff with me.
The vampire squeaked as she was whisked off her feet and into his magically strengthened arms, pressed against his naked chest, his shirt having been lost to the Ashe.
"Come on you lot," he said to the others.
Without question the wolf rose and followed with the tittering fairy riding near his head and the owl at the middle of his back adjusting her grip.