Marion sprinted forward.
Her legs were bound in leggings, yet her feet were bare, the rough rocks of Mount Angaso striking her unprotected soles. Large patches of brown skin peeked out from beneath her linen skirt—a garment made five years ago that had long since grown too short for a sixteen-year-old girl.
Perhaps "girl" was not the right word.
If a late-returning woodcutter looked up, he would be startled by the sight. What kind of girl could run so fast through the mountains and forests while carrying someone taller than herself? She was as sturdy as a young horse, but the person on her back towered over her, half his weight hanging from her not-particularly-broad shoulders. The figure groaned in pain, and Marion's ears twitched as she shifted direction.
One glance at the pair of furry ears peeking from her hair would convince anyone she was no ordinary human girl. Those canine ears darted alertly about, while her sharp, claw-like toenails dug into the earth, enabling her to sprint across the treacherous mountain paths. She had run for far too long, sweat matting her gray hair. Even Marion could not keep running forever.
"Put me down, child," said the tall passenger.
It was an old man, his face thick with beard, every inch of skin covered in layers of furrowed lines like tree bark. He looked so ancient it was strange he could still move, stranger still that time hadn't shriveled that imposing frame—if his back had bent with age, how formidable must he have been in his youth? The question mattered little; he was very old.
"No," Marion said.
She had answered many times, each response shorter, each more weary, yet the answer never changed. The mountain wind howled in their ears, carrying the scent of kerosene, smoke, hounds, and humans. Marion wished she could smell "that hound"—the red-hued detector humans used to identify and pursue the other kind, deliberately designed to avoid sensing its prey.
The old man did not try to persuade her further.
Marion saw the gray-white beard on his own shoulder. Before setting out, it had been brown. The roots of the Oak Elder dug deep into the earth, drawing clean water from Angaroth's death-stricken wasteland and bearing acorns. The acorns drew acorn-eating birds, which in turn attracted various predators, sustaining the entire nomad camp. He had lived there for centuries until the damned invaders charged into the wilderness with swords and torches.
When they had to take the Old Man of the Oak with them, his roots beneath the earth could not come along. Green blood flowed from his feet, and many wept. The old man stroked their heads.
They had been fleeing for four full days. Marion tasted mountain rat blood between her teeth, while the Old Oak had only sipped clear water. He needed fertile soil to take root—how could an ancient tree endure exile on a stony mountain? Yet they had no luxury of rest. On the first night, Marion climbed a hilltop and saw distant fires blazing skyward. The homes the wanderers had painstakingly built were consumed by flames. The roots and branches the Old Oak had left behind turned to ash. Had the nesting birds and squirrels escaped? Marion wanted to know. Marion would never know.
That place had been her second home, her only remaining family.
On the second day after leaving the Wanderers' camp, they faced a second attack. At that time, Marion was still with all the exiles. Soldiers with red hounds assaulted the weary Wanderers. Seven people were left behind forever. Later, two more fell behind, one fatally wounded. "We should have shaken them off!" the childless widow screamed hysterically. "The Redhounds can't find us this far out!"
It was true, many present knew it. The camp's inhabitants were all outcasts from Erian, and many understood the soldiers' methods for hunting "the other kind." "We should have been safe!" the widow wailed, and Marion felt many eyes turn toward her.
She wasn't the only outsider to join the nomad camp in recent years, but Marion was the only one who, at first glance, clearly wasn't human. The stronger the alien bloodline, the farther the Red Hounds could track—even Marion herself suspected she'd brought this disaster upon them.
"I'll distract them," Marion stepped forward. "Split up. I'll go..."
"I'll go too."
A stir rippled through the crowd. Amidst the wanderers' astonished stares, the Oak Elder stepped forward. He raised a gnarled hand, waving it at the panicked crowd, struggling to quell all confusion and pleas. "My alien blood runs thicker than Marion's. If they can find her, they'll find me too." He turned to Marion. " This isn't your fault."
In the end, they split into two groups. Marion led the Old Man of Oak away. If they could successfully shake off their pursuers, the rendezvous point would be at the headwaters of the stream on the other side of the mountain. Marion guessed that by then, fewer than half would make it to the meeting place. The residents of the wanderers' camp were a frightened flock of birds. After this incident, few would be willing to risk being implicated and discovered.
Marion didn't blame them. At seven, she and her mother had been captured and thrown into human cages. She knew well the fate awaiting outsiders. At eleven, she'd narrowly escaped, spending the next three years hiding and surviving across Erian, a lost soul like a stray dog. By fourteen, Marion had abandoned any hope of settling down. Then she stumbled upon the Wanderers' Camp. The short residents bandaged her wounds, children stared curiously at her ears, and a tree said: Of course you can stay.
At that moment, Marion resolved to die defending this place, just as her father had died defending his homeland.
Sweat trickled down Marion's forehead, stinging her eyes as it ran through her damp eyebrows. A scabbed wound crisscrossed her eyelids, nearly blinding her. It came from a skirmish two days prior, though the soldier who inflicted it had already had his throat slit by Marion.
She craved the sharp claws and fangs that could tear flesh more than a blade, though her teeth and nails were scarcely longer than those of ordinary humans. Marion preferred roasted meat to raw, and the tribe members she remembered were more adept with tools than their own limbs. Sometimes she even felt they differed little from human hunters.
Marion's mother said their ancestors could shift freely between giant wolves and human form. Marion vaguely recalled seeing upright wolves in cave paintings, though she couldn't be certain which form their ancestors truly took. They were always on the move, listening to stories from her father and mother, who in turn heard them from their own parents... Too many of their kind died before they could tell their stories, while others never had children. Too much history was lost in blood. Marion never saw another of her kind again, not a single one. Some nights she lay awake, terrified she might be the last. She wondered, if she were the last, how could she tell her child? That their mother had been too playful and restless in her youth to pass on many legends or histories?
Now it seemed a naive thought. She likely wouldn't live to see that day.
Marion's shoulders slumped as the old man's labored breathing grew faint. "Grandfather?" she cried in alarm, turning to look at the Oak Elder. In that instant, she stumbled forward.
Was it a protruding rock, or a dead vine? Or perhaps Marion's legs had simply grown too weak to run any further. She fell forward, unable to steady herself, the ground looming larger before her eyes. She let herself be the cushion, shielding the old man beneath her with all her strength, until her head struck the earth and all her troubles faded away.
Marion awoke to the pressure of her necklace, her mother's canine tooth pressed against her cheek, rousing her from unconsciousness.
It was now completely dark. A lump formed on her head. Judging by the distance the stars had moved, she hadn't been unconscious for long. Thankfully, Marion had been close to the mountain's base. Rolling from the foothills to the flat ground below had covered only about ten meters.
The Old Man Oak lay beside her, eyes closed, still breathing faintly. Marion scrambled to her feet, suddenly sensing something amiss with the starlight.
Too bright, too close—as if it hovered right beside them.
Marion whipped her head around and saw a ghostly figure suspended midair.
How long had it been watching them? At least since Marion awoke... watching? It had no face, only a mass of silvery mist and hair drifting like seaweed. Suspended motionless in the air, strands of hair fluttered around it. That blank face faced Marion, as if watching her.
"Mom?" Marion murmured.
She immediately bit her tongue until it bled, wanting to punch herself for her foolishness. Yes, Marion had heard the tales of ancestral spirits. If you missed a relative enough, and they missed you enough, their ghost might appear before you. But it was just a story, a child's comforting lie. Marion didn't believe it at all. Otherwise, how could she have never seen her father or mother? That wasn't her mother. It didn't have pointed ears.
Marion stood guard against this unknown creature before her, growling menacingly....
"What is she saying?" Tasha asked.
"She's calling you 'Mom,'" Victor replied, sounding almost gleeful.
Tasha commanded the goblin to dig an opening in a hidden spot, then began floating above the ground. Below lay a vast plain, with mountains and forests stretching into the distance. As a city dweller with little knowledge of plants, Tasha couldn't discern much difference between this place and Earth. The Dungeon Book nagged her to catch the goblin. Ghosts moved faster than goblins, and soon she arrived at the location Victor had mentioned.
"Is this what goblins look like?" Tasha asked, eyeing the unconscious beast-eared girl and the towering old man on the ground. "Quite the intraspecies variation, huh?"
"Not goblins, but similar magic levels," Victor muttered. "Probably humans with a trace of beastkin blood? Oh, this old treant is near death."
"Are you even competent? You messed this up?" Tasha challenged.
"It's been nearly five hundred years!" Victor protested. "The magic in the air is as weak as in the Dead Magic Zone, and I was badly injured. You wouldn't even share your core power with me!"
Tasha ignored him.
Time returned to the present.
"Is this how you talk to your mother?" Tasha observed the growling girl before her. "She looks like she wants to lunge at me and bite."
"Maybe that's just how beastfolk greet their mothers," Victor said irresponsibly.
"Tell her I'm not her mother."
"Can't do that, dear Master!" Victor replied. "You're my contract holder, which is why we can communicate telepathically from this distance. But communicating with other creatures? Impossible. You won't share your core power with me..."
"Enough, shut up." Tasha snapped.
The beast-eared girl had indistinct gray fur, sharp triangular ears perched atop her head like an alert dog. Her face and body were caked in dust and blood as she growled something at Tasha.
"What does that mean?" Tasha asked.
"Probably 'Don't come closer'... or something."
"'Probably'?"
"It's been nearly five hundred years!" Victor protested. "A language can undergo countless changes in a single century. I can't contact the Abyss now, and I'm severely injured..."
"You weren't just guessing earlier, were you?" Tasha narrowed her eyes, recalling those unscrupulous subtitle groups that admitted, "Sorry, we can't make this up anymore."
"'Daddy' and 'mommy'—those basic words for kids hardly change over centuries! You think a demon who's outsmarted countless races wouldn't know countless languages? Orcish is the simplest language there is!" Victor fought to save face. "And I can teach you this new language in no time!"
"Is that so?" Tasha asked skeptically.
"Of course. Just eat her," Victor declared smugly. "She's barely clinging to life now. Five goblins could easily overpower her. Kill her in the magic pool, devour her body and soul—her knowledge will become yours."