First note: the writing was choppy, I know. It's supposed to be. It was called mood style. The time for that part is confusing because it's all supposed to run together until something definitive happens, which is this chapter.

Second note: Sorry about the Halloo thing. It is changed now, I just forgot to add two words when I wrote it originally.

Third note: It's short. The next one may not be so much, but also don't expect it as soon. I had some free time on my hands.

The Traitor

Chapter Two

Bloodhoof village was generally a quiet place. There were fights with goblins and other creatures of burden, but they were rare. Scouts had begun to report, however, the appearance of dwarves in the mountains in small mining camps. They were a muted threat; their advance was little and they carefully stayed away from too much interaction with the defensive forces.

Morla was twelve when they came.

Clef was in the middle of his warrior training. He had begun last year and would finish the next; focusing worked wonders for the tauren. He was calmer now in a noticeable way and he threw fits less often. He was also maturing, having just turned nineteen. When they were together, Clef and Morla, the great beast could sit still for long periods of time and talk, or fish, or meditate. He had overcome his awkwardness with the axe and now wielded it easily. Morla could sometimes walk out in the morning from the medicine woman's tent and see her companion cleaving melons.

They were sitting outside, watching the kodo and throwing them apples when Morla saw them. They streamed down from the mountain in a clear trail of black, like many ants, far away at first and growing larger as they moved. The girl tugged on Clef's arm and when he turned, she pointed up at what she saw: the dwarves coming down like fire through the trees. Because of the morning sun, which was barely over the top of the mountains, the cliff face they tread was in shadow, and Clef had trouble seeing them at first.

Immediately Clef yelled wordlessly at the kodo trainer standing nearby. "What is it?" he called. Clef gestured toward the mountain and managed to say, "Dwarves! Coming!"

By the time even a part of the village had roused the dwarves were on them, flooding into the town in numbers no one had even considered anticipating. It was a threat that should not have been ignored—this was the thought in the mind of the few warriors and scouts that had gathered by the time the tide had overtaken them. Shouts rang out in the village and Clef and Morla still stood by the kodo, watching. Clef had his axe with him and unstrung it from his back, and went toward four dwarves approaching.

Morla crouched, her blood pumping hotly through her veins. She felt it bubble around her ears and cheeks, warming up her brain until it didn't function properly any longer. There were images, and she opened her mouth wanting to cry at Clef, who axed through two dwarves at once with an immense swing. They split, not smoothly, with skin and muscle ripping into a brief burst of blood. Clef's arms and chest were shiny with the life liquid after he had slaughtered the other two dwarves, beheading one and cleaving the other in the gut, which burst, and spilled entrails onto the ground as he fell. He breathed hard and stepped back, blood dribbling off of him onto the dirt and staining it black. The two looked up and Clef cried out when four more dwarves jumped on him, and another half-dozen swarmed around his legs. He slashed at them, throwing a few, but they easily picked themselves up and rejoined the fray like rats or dogs.

Shivering, Morla could only watch. She tried to cry out even harder than before when the kodo master was taken as well, doing far better than Clef but still being overtaken by the dwarves' sheer numbers. How they hadn't seen her yet, crouching beside the fence, Morla didn't know, or consider; she watched open-mouthed and pale-faced as a dwarf buried a knife into Clef's thigh and the tauren roared. The sound of it went into her and she felt an indescribable flooding of searing heat rip through her chest, exploding and flaming into her head and feet, hands and neck. It roared and swirled behind her eyeballs so they burned and she had to close her eyes to accommodate the pain. She saw her arms grow red where the veins had once been blue, and the skin of her hands was pink.

Everything around Morla slowed then. The air, even, stopped moving, and she breathed deeply to keep the air flowing through her lungs. She looked up again, now able to see once more, for the pain seemed to have dissipated. The scene before her had halted completely. Clef was bent over, blood coagulating around the knife still embedded in his leg. One dwarf was wrestling with his horn and another was wielding yet another knife; ten feet away, a dwarf had a gun aimed at his head. Two other of the horrid creatures were aiming at him from the ground with axes, planning to cut out his legs from under him.

Morla looked at her hands and they now glowed a very unnatural red, almost emitting light. She gasped and tried to draw away when the redness suddenly engulfed her fingers and seemed to come out from them. The redness turned into great balls that began to move and wave like flames. Morla howled when she felt the pain again and then there was an immense sound, that vibrated her bones.

A small hand, with long nails, came up from the ground between some blades of grass. The fingers wiggled a bit and she saw the skin was red; then a creature came up, using the hand to lift himself over the edge of... something, Morla wasn't sure what. She watched, silent as she always would be, as a small, dangly creature, almost two feet tall, stretched itself out like a cat just waking up from a nap. It opened its big eyes and looked at her, with long ears twitching, and smiled.

"I'm here to help," it said, and then time resumed.

Creatures burst out of tents; the air; the ground; they sprung out from everywhere, all kinds of them, red and blue and purple, all of them deformed and wild and crying horrible, angry cries. The dwarves approaching Clef only saw the demons when they lit him on fire.

The little imp that had first come walked slowly, agonizingly slowly, to where Morla stood, now pale and struggling to stand. It took her hand in its own and rolled over her fingers, and looked up. "It's taken care of," it told her, and licked her wrist with its long, thin, forked tongue. Morla gasped at the pain that caroused from the lick up her arm. It burned and she saw that there was a small pinkish-white mark, with little black seared edges. She stared at the imp and it stared back, and then pointed up.

Tauren were trying to attack the demons now, which had quite obliterated all of the attackers, even those still on the mountain. There were little fires every place a dwarf had burned up like a straw house. Seeing the work was done, the creatures, seemingly immune to the attacks of the noble tauren, evaporated in little wisps of smoke.

Morla looked up at Clef, who was bleeding, and watching her in return. She fainted, and the imp disappeared.

--

One warrior had died, two were injured. The village was in a kind of shock. Clef had taken Morla to her cot, where she had awoken with her best friend sitting beside her, leaned over. She noticed that the once sharp point of one horn was gone; it had been chipped off. His leg was bandaged properly and he didn't appear too troubled by the wound. When Morla sat up and rubbed her face, the tauren turned to her and wrapped her in his great furry arms, tightening them until she gasped. He dropped her back to the cot and stood up, wringing his hands, and then left the tent.

Morla followed him out and saw the scene.

Covering the village were wooden stakes, put in the ground, tops adorned with flowers and charms—Morla knew this kind, they were charms asking that the Earth mother accept back whoever had died into her arms so they could successfully become soil once more. A few tauren were there, going about the village, but they were hunched over and the lot of them looked wary and had a certain haggard appearance to them. When Morla came out, those she had known saw her and steadily walked away, keeping their heads down.

Clef stood beside her for a moment, and then led her without words toward the kodo pen where she had been when the attack came. Morla smiled when she saw Paine walking toward them, but she felt a vague emotion of dread when she saw that his face was hardened and his walk was square and unyielding; Loulo sat by the door of the Stronghorn family's tent, holding her knees in her arms and keeping her eyes away.

Paine pushed Clef out of his way, and the younger tauren let his brother, although his face was contorted with irritation. Paine came up far closer than Morla would have liked him to be and grabbed her by the back collar of her shirt—by her scruff—and lifted her up without difficulty to look at him face-to-face.

"You called them, I know," he said. His voice was rough and scaly, pained to come out and pained to hear. His lips were pursed together, and when he spoke again, his eyes became clouded and his eyebrows tilted in what appeared to Morla to be pity, or perhaps regret. "The elder wishes to see you."

This raised the girl's hopes. She didn't know what she had done; she remembered the imp only vaguely, but she hadn't consciously brought the demons. They just had sprouted through her, as if she had channeled them with her very body, and they were the fire that had laced through her blood. It wasn't as if she had meant to do it. It had only somehow... happened. Paine scratched his head for a moment and then grabbed Morla by the arm. Clef moved to take her back—and looking at his face, he would have attacked his own brother to do so—but Morla shook her head and gave him the sign that she would be all right.

There were some tauren, mostly older ones—the heads of families—gathered around Morla's tent where she lived with the medicine woman, or the elder. Paine dragged her inside past his father, the head of the Stronghorns, and into the tent.

There was a fire in the middle and Morla saw that the cot she had been sleeping on only minutes before was gone. The medicine woman sat in front of the fire, with two other elders to either side of her, with the heads of the families standing at the entrances to the tent. Morla was shoved into the middle, nearly falling back when flames from the fire licked her legs. With care she stepped back and clasped her hands together, and turned around to see that Clef had managed to come partially inside, enough to see the proceedings.

"The village of Bloodhoof thanks Morla Stronghorn for her valiant success in the battle of yesterday. She defended us with honor and saved our tribe." There were murmurs amongst those standing around, but the old woman silenced them by raising one hand and clenching it into a fist. Then, she took out a small leather bag, removing a handful of dust from it, and with a practiced, elegant flick of her wrist, salted the fire with the dust.

The flames morphed, growing and shrinking with an unnatural speed. Morla stepped back when they seemed to arc towards her and heads formed; they growled and opened their wide jaws, and snapped their teeth like vice grips. Paine and Maine prevented Clef from entering the tent behind her.

"But our village is a peaceful one, and our tribe is a tribe of the Earth mother. For this reason, we cannot tolerate the unnatural of evil and its denizens." The medicine woman, until now, had kept her eyes closed and seemed to be in a meditative state as she spoke. She opened them when she addressed Morla again and focused her glassy blind eyes on the silent human girl in front of her, who managed to sit still while the flames growled and roared at her, spitting sparks on her clothes. "Those who associate with demons are natural enemies of the tauren. We cannot tolerate your presence in this peaceful village. In accordance with our laws, I hereby ban you from Bloodhoof and forbid you ever to return, unless you have evidence that your body has been purged of its netherworld powers."

Clef, then, managed to press past his brothers and scoop up the surprised girl. An elder and two family heads moved to stop him, but the medicine woman raised her hand, palm flat, and they became very still.

"Clef Stronghorn," she addressed him. He turned to her with widened, angry eyes, and she smiled. "You will care for this girl, and go with her. But as a beloved son of Bloodhoof and the Earth mother, you may return whenever you wish." The elder then took another leather bag from a small chest beside her and offered it to him. Clef hesitated a moment before taking it.

"Come here, child," she told him. Setting down Morla, and looking at her to make sure no one would try to harm her, Clef went toward the woman and kneeled down. She whispered in his ear.

"Take this to Cairne Bloodhoof when she is ready. While we may not want her, someone else may." She put the bag into his hand and clasped his fingers over it. "Now go. I trust you are confident in your training?"

Clef nodded his head. "Good." She shooed him away and he quickly took Morla's hand in his, pushing past his brothers and father without sparing them a second glance. As the human passed Maine looked down and she saw a smile flicker across his face, and in it she could read: "Take care. We will miss you."

On the edge of the village, when Clef and Morla had slowed to a walk, still hand-in-hand, Loulo came out from behind a fence. She was mostly white with black spots, and a black head with small, brown and white horns. Nostrils flared and eyes red and shining with unshed tears, Loulo took the girl from her brother and hugged her tightly. She sniffed and moaned, "I don't know why they're making you leave us," she murmured. "They would never do this to one of our own."

"She isn't one of us," was Clef's reply, and Morla, of course, said nothing. Morla did however pat her surrogate sister on the arm before stepping back. She signed, "I'll see you again someday," and kissed Loulo on the soft fur of her nose. The tauren nodded and Clef took his charge once more. He nodded to his sister.

"We will write to y-you," he managed, and then turned on his heel out of the village, toward the Barrens, with Morla following behind him.