RoH: Fraught With Magic

Remant walked out into the woods, slipping between the trees and easing through the underbrush until the camp was well behind him. He was fully dressed now, with his sword on his hip and the dagger in his left boot, his bow across his back and a quiver of arrows arranged beneath it, slung crossways at the small of his back. They were still three days out from Doblim, and the woods here were thick. Whoever and whatever was out here, Remant doubted that they were anything more than rumors to the people of the would-be capital city. 

"You come to us?" asked a voice, soft in the darkness. 

It sounded nearby, almost at his shoulder, but Remant shrugged and disdained to look around. He didn't know what sort of magic had been used to project it, but he knew for a fact that nobody was standing behind him. "It seemed easier."

"Whatever it is you carry, it strains the fabric of this world. No difficulty to sense it, no fault to want it." This time the voice came from ahead and off to his left, but he thought that that too was misdirection. 

"On the contrary," he replied. "There is fault in wanting such things."

"Easy to say when you have them." This time the voice was behind him, but farther back. "Easy to say, when your place is secure." 

Remant sighed, but remained where he was. "There's some truth in that," he admitted. "What is it that you want?"

"A place of our own, safe from those who drove us out. Ascendancy, security. A world in which we make the rules by which we are judged."

"Do you not have that now?" Remant still wasn't sure what he was dealing with, but  it sounded as if these beast-bound had been driven away from Doblim, or possibly some other city, and taken a place out here in the woods. 

The voice moved again, or seemed to: "We do, but the cities rise again. With the power you carry, we could drive them back, separate them, isolate them. We could make the world safe."

Safe for whom? Remant shook his head slowly. "Clearly you have power already. Surely you can work out some way to live beyond the cities, to give them something they need and make them accept you."

"Diplomacy?" scoffed the voice, now somewhere off to his right. "We tried that before. Now, it will be conquest. And the power you carry will show us the way." 

The first attack came from behind him, and Remant met it with a sense of regret: four wolves, their shoulders as high as his own, charging in from separate directions, dodging from side to side as they approached. He cut and stepped back and to the right as one wolf fell, cut back and twisted to the left and rear as the second one reached him, forced his eyes shut as he called for a flash of light, and then stepped forward and cut down the remaining two as they stood, staggered. 

"Did you enjoy that?" he asked. "I didn't. Give up this poisonous dream and let me pass."

"We... do not yield," said the voice, and Remant felt the forces stir as a mist sprang up from the ground and spectral figures rose out of the mist. 

"Leave them to their rest," Remant growled, watching as the ghostly figures approached. Then he launched himself among them, and the blade of his saber cut them apart as if they were flesh. They screamed, fell, dissolved. 

"You do have your surprises," the voice admitted, this time drifting across the back of his neck. "But you will fall, and we will take your power."

"Promises, promises," answered Remant. He knelt, pulled the dagger from his boot, and held it in his left hand. His saber balanced easily in his right. "Come and try it."

They came, finally, from all directions: four men and eight women, pulling beast-forms over their human bodies as they fell on him. His sword cut their beast-flesh as easily as it would have parted human, and the dagger covered wounds with ice wherever it struck. They attacked, fell back, gathered over their wounded and attacked again; at the end of things, they all lay still and much of the forest around Remant was covered in frost. Spears of ice pierced several of the corpses. 

Remant sighed. "It didn't have to be like this," he said, though most of them were too far gone to hear him. "We could have sat and talked. You didn't have to raid the camp. You didn't have to try to murder me."

One of the dying beast-bound coughed and looked up at him. "I would-- I would..." Then there came a rattling sound, and the woman fell back a corpse. 

Remant shook his head and turned back towards the caravan.