The night ran off as Maeve slept soundly. The tarp shielded her of distractions, and the sheets she laid upon outmatched the bed from The Rusty Sparrow tenfold. Snug as a bug in a rug, she tugged the sheet close against her skin.
"Hey," Clint's whisper reached the groggy Maeve from the small crack of light creeping along with him. "Wake up, alley cat. We've got a lot of work to do. Follow me."
Maeve's squinted eyes nearly allowed her to rise, stretching her arms like a sloth. Clint left the entrance slightly open as a crack of light crept into Maeve's eyes, guiding her in annoyance out of her shelter. When Maeve emerged, almost everyone around her was already hard at work, be it constructing water-filtration systems, tents, and wooden shacks to help preserve stolen foods. While studying her surroundings, however, Maeve failed to locate Clint.
"This way, Maeve!" Clint yelled from behind her tent, running off towards an exit out of the open sewage outlet. Maeve gave chase, gaining on him with ease as she further examined her exact surroundings. The massive cavernous sewer was a maintenance facility, judging by the control valves and flooding shelters in the case of water having to flow through the system. It seemed to her that the Marauders had educated plumbers for their cause, or the base would have been flooded over only a couple days ago.
Maeve reached Clint at the exit on the far end of the shelter, clueless as to where it led. The two ventured through the nearly endless pipelines, guided by Clint, who seemed well versed in its pathways, secrets, and advantages, eventually stopping right below a manhole cover.
"Hold it," Clint ordered. "We're here." Clint stood up and lifted the manhole, letting daylight tear into the pipeline. As Clint jumped up out of the pipe and hoisted Maeve up, the Enchanted Forest welcomed the weary travellers to its domain by littering the oak trees' leaves blissfully dancing in the ambient breeze, gently touching their skin as the sunlight warmed their souls.
Hands on his hips - triumphantly smiling - Clint welcomed Maeve to the Enchanted Forest. "Well, not quite," he corrected. "This isn't exactly the Enchanted Forest, but it's almost the same thing."
Maeve's smile was unyielding, she'd never been to a forest in her life, and she always wanted to see it, be it without dangers. Surprisingly, however, the stillness halted Maeve's typically paranoid temperament, relaxing her to previously unattainable levels, almost as if changing her entire personality. She raised an eyebrow at Clint. "What's so different about it?! It's just… beautiful."
"Oh, you'll see," Clint promised. "But until then, let's train you!" Clint yanked a dagger out of his jeans and hurled it at Maeve at lightning speed, landing inches from her leg; the dagger looked similar to the ones she had stolen for the heist on the Fortress Keep.
"Whoah!" Maeve shrieked, losing her rare sense of serenity. "What are you doing?!" Recalling, the dagger flew at inhuman speeds, mesmerizing her on how he had thrown it so quick.
"Crystal infused," Clint explained. "Your coat harbors a crystal. Do you know how dangerous that is?"
Maeve was well-aware of the dangers of harboring a crystal this size solely based on experience, but the fact that Clint swiped her own daggers agitated her mildly, for did he take it from her without her noticing? Clint picked up the dagger next to her foot and playfully pointed it at Maeve, eyebrows raised as he naively stared at the dagger, like Tiberius did the day before. "Watch this." Recoiling his arm, Clint chucked the dagger into the woods, and it flew far into the air, eventually disappearing from all of their vision into the foggy backend of the forest. Enthused, Clint's smile escaped from his face, hardly containing himself as he understood the impact this had on the Marauders' current situation. "Look, Maeve." He grew serious, setting his hand on her shoulder. "I want you to practice all day, today. Keep hitting the bark. Maraya!"
Maeve's head jerked back a bit, confused. All day? Here? How is she supposed to do that without any daggers in sight? As she pondered, Maraya slid down the treetops down the trunks, holding a shovel.
"Over here, girl," Maraya continued digging after calling Maeve over, who flocked beside her. "Some tools." The dirt released from the ground, piling to the side as a crate uncovered with a finished wooden gleam. Maeve opened the crate and countless daggers, all the exact same build, size, and shape, lay inside.
"We've been waiting quite some time for this," Maraya comforted. "Since the Fortress Collapse, we found out about your affinity for these shark-toothed shivs." Maeve looked at Maraya with disbelief, and she only responded with a humble smile and a "Happy Training!"
Daggers danced around the Forest that day, jabbing into tree trunks and slicing through leaves like a hunter at play as the girl kept working far into the day, accompanied by singing birds and blissful butterflies landing on the Spring Meadow, only to be viciously sliced at its stem by an incoming dagger.
Clint appeared every 3 hours to check on Maeve, be it in secret or with advice. "Don't hesitate," Clint preached, revelling at the passionate Maeve who curiously whipped daggers to no end. "They will try and convince you that they're just - correct. You and I both know the truth." With each target hit, Clint reacted more and more confidently, eagerly witnessing her exponential progression in precision and accuracy. As the day pressed on, the treebark slowly gave in, successfully forging Maeve into an ameatur knife-weilder and thrower; she got cocky, flipping around the throwing them uniquely each time. As she threw, she adopted the habit of volleying two at a time, in quick succession before pulling out two more to repeat the process. Judging by Clint's face, he could never have been more satisfied, and he happily fled back into the pipe. That irked Maeve as she noticed the evening sun fade in the horizon, all alone, with neither Clint nor Maraya to guide her back to the shelter for a good night's rest. Chills rose up her spine as the night grew chilly in the less blanketed forest, and quickly her eyes dilated, activating a flight-or-flight response. Something was watching her. Instinctively, Maeve closed her eyes to focus. She felt as if the object grew nearer and southwest. Without hesitation, Maeve flinged two knives right at her suspicion, and she heard the thuds of the daggers hit a tree close to her position. Preparing to grab two more, a lantern lit next to her.
"Hold on there, kiddo," It was Clint. "Wow! Bravo! Great job!" He started clapping with the lantern in his left hand. It was not pitch black outside yet, although a lantern was still needed to see for Clint; Maeve could see just fine despite her minor agitation at the fact that it was all a test. Maraya even appeared behind Clint, not clapping, but approving with a slow nod.
"You want to know why it's called the Everlight Forest?" Maraya intruded as Clint and her looked up towards the trees behind Maeve as she turned to follow suit. The green oak leaves started glowing slowly and slowly, until they reflected somber amber light back into the forest, engulfing the forest into a lantern-filled utopia, bright and sollumn with dim, glowing leaves.
"The plants always have sunlight here," Clint softly spoke as he gazed with the three at the Everlight leaves. "The sunlight they soak is so abundant they need to expunge it back into the ecosystem."
Maraya giggled, giving Clint a friendly jab to the shoulder as Maeve awestruckenly stared at the wonder paying little attention. "Since when were you a botanist?"
"Since forever, Maraya!" Clint budged. "As a kid, it was all I read; I always wanted to have a farm…"
The three stared intently at the beauty for a few moments, letting them soak it up like perspectivist medicine. "Should we start… you know…" Maeve suggested naturally, "heading back?"
Clint and Maraya looked at each other. "Not yet, I'm afraid." Clint noted, kneeling down to face Maeve at eye level. "We've seen you run before, Maeve." Clin lowered his voice, staring deeply into her cat eyes, almost as if he was begging.
"You're capable of more than you know," Maraya added. "That crystal grants you powers we could never even dream of having in our wildest dreams. With you, we could get a chance - just a chance - at that dream."
"How?" Maeve asked skeptically.
"We'll explain tomorrow," Clint reassured. "For now, do what we know you do best in this forest; show us."
Maeve nodded obediently. "I won't let you down!" Maeve gestured with a stoic nod as she turned and ran towards a massive log. Maeve jumped and jumped again, bounding over the log with effortless grace as pink streaks flooded behind her, marking her approximate path. She turned with a lean and vaulted off of a tree trunk, getting for height with a single bound and double-jumped to nearly land on an even higher branch, now several stories high in mere seconds, all before she confidently jumping off that tree and landed with a thud into the dirt right in front of the ecstatic Clint and impressed Maraya. "You can count on me to secure the Marauders' future!"
