FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

To Dream of Darkness

A story by DoggyStyle57

Chapter 4, Written December 2011

===

Chapter 4 - The will to survive

When Sarah awoke, she was in complete darkness. Something warm and soft was against both sides of her. It felt like fur. Wolf fur. "D-daddy?" she stammered, half asleep. Then she realized the scent was wrong. But it was one she knew. Several friends.

"Brothers," came the reply, in wolf talk.

"She lives," said a second wolf, on the other side of her.

"Can she move?" said a third, older wolf, some distance away.

Sarah looked in the direction of the last voice, and saw a pale ribbon of stars. "I'm in a cave. That's right. I was in a cave," she said to herself.

She stretched her legs and arms, and carefully sat up. "I can move. Just scratches. Is it safe out there now? There were armored men, and attack-trained dogs," she said in wolf talk.

"They are gone now. We found you two days ago. No wolf small enough to fit through this crack in the stone was strong enough to drag you out. You slept like a dead thing, but your brothers assured me you were still alive. Come to the pack. You have no other home to return to, little pup," said the adult wolf sadly.

Sarah crawled to the crack, and wriggled through it into the cool night air. It was night, and the moon hadn't risen yet. Her night dress was torn, but still good enough to wear for now. A jet black wolf, much too large to enter the crack, waited for her outside the small cave.

Sarah looked around. Her eyes adapted quickly to the starlight, and though there was no moon, she could see the marks of many man and dog's footprints. Wolf tracks were there too, but always atop the dog and Human tracks. And there was no blood to be seen.

"Two days? Why did they go away? They had me trapped. They were trying to shoot me, and then they vanished? The pack did not fight them, did it?" she asked.

"We did not get involved. By the time we scented the fire, your parents were already quite dead, and we feared they had killed you too. Your father accounted himself well. He became a great bear, and took three men and four dogs with him into death. Your mother killed two dogs and one man. But men killed them both, standing back and shooting sharp sticks at them, until they fell," the wolf said.

"They had crossbows. I... saw mother die," Sarah said. Strangely, she couldn't seem to cry. "She couldn't have hoped to win, against so many men and dogs. She sacrificed herself, to give me time to run away."

"The fox-woman loved you, very much. So did your father. We will howl for them tonight. Come. There is nothing there for you. Burned, all of it," the wolf said.

Sarah looked back in the direction where her home had once been. She could see a plume of smoke rising still. "There may be some things worth getting, but that can wait. The men that attacked us may be watching. I will go with you, Midnight. I will howl with the pack, to honor my parents. I will howl because I am still alive, to slay the men that took their lives!"

Sarah thought for a moment, and then took off her shredded nightgown, throwing it back into the cave. Her eyes glowed bright green as her shape shifted into her wolf form. Soon she was a coal-black wolf, with bright green eyes, and of similar size to her yearling wolf brothers.

"Men did this, but I do not know why. My parents were the only people who ever cared for me, and even they were not really Human. I forsake mankind and their ways. I will be a wolf, now, like my brothers. My family now is the wolf pack," she growled.

===

That night, as the moon rose, the wolf pack gathered in the forest, in a clearing that was near the top of the ridge that the cliffs were in. Grey Shadow and Moonlight sniff-greeted each wolf as they arrived. When Midnight, Sarah and her two brothers arrived, they had Sarah sit beside them.

"Two nights ago, men killed two friends of our Pack," Grey Shadow said. "We will not speak their names again, but we will remember them. One was father and mate to many of us. He especially shall not be forgotten. His mate was a wild spirit, and she cared for us as well. All that is left of them is those that he sired among us, and their daughter, who is with our pack tonight."

The wolves all howled mournfully, honoring their fallen friends, or, in some cases, honoring their mate or father. Sarah howled with them, mourning her parents. And still she did not cry. She wondered if wolves were even able to cry. When all had howled, Grey Shadow looked at Sarah, and said, "We are sad that we could not aid them. The men attacked savagely, and swiftly, as men often do, and used weapons that kill from far away. Why did they attack? We thought your family was at peace with the local men."

"I do not know, pack alpha. But I will find out. May I ask that the pack search the area, and try to find out what happened? If the pack can tell me what they find, perhaps I can understand what happened," Sarah said, sadly.

"We will search, yes. And you may join our pack for as long as you wish, provided you accept the laws of the pack. You have played among us for four seasons. You know our ways. Do you accept me as your pack alpha, and my mate, Moonlight, as your alpha bitch? Will you live as a wolf among us, and follow our laws?" Grey shadow asked.

Sarah lay before the two timber wolves, and rolled over on her back, exposing her belly to them, as she replied, "You are my alpha male, and my alpha bitch. I accept your leadership, and will find my place in your pack, by the laws of the pack."

"You do not need to fight for rank yet, puppy. In your wolf form, you are younger than your youngest brothers among us. You will be treated as a pup until your first heat," she leader of the wolf pack stated. "You have cast aside your old life. You will not be living with us as a daughter of man. What name do you want to be called by?"

Sarah rolled back over and stood up. As she did so, a dense cloud passed over the moon, and a strong breeze passed through the clearing. "Dark Wind. I will be Dark Wind, and I shall move through the land at night like the wind, seeking my vengeance. I will find those who caused the death of my family, and who tried to kill me, and I will slay them. That is the law of the pack. Kill or be killed. I will be the predator, and they will be my prey. I will survive."

===

There were no soldiers in the woods, and no one left behind to watch the farm's ruins. There appeared to be nothing left of any value, and the villagers expected the girl would appear soon enough in the village or at a nearby farm, hungry and helpless. She had to eat, and she had nothing now.

The remains of Dark Wind's parents had been left where they were slain, pierced by over a dozen crossbow bolts each, torn apart by dogs, and decapitated by a sword blow. Dark Wind became Human again to salvage what she could, and to deal with the remains of her family. She and two of her wolf brothers dragged the remains of her mother back to the farm, to lie with her father's remains. Her father's keys she found matted into the blood soaked fur of his chest ruff. She carefully removed the chain, and put it around her own neck. Most of the dogs had been poisoned, with tainted meat scraps. One dog had apparently refused the tainted meat and put up a fight, and had been killed with three crossbow bolts. All of the dogs had been decapitated.

Although the fire had burned the barn and house to the ground, the floor of the barn had not collapsed, and there was not very much debris over the forge, and its movable hearthstone. In one corner of the yard, Dark Wind found a wheelbarrow that was intact. She gathered a few knives and tools that she could salvage from the burned remains of her home and the barn, and tossed them in the wheelbarrow. Then she opened the hearthstone, and climbed down into her father's magical workshop.

The workshop was still intact. Sarah found a flint and steel, and lit the tallow lamps. Then she gathered all the loose books and scrolls, and placed them in the first chest, where father kept the more simple magical and herbal texts. She tried the keys in the locks of the other three chests. The second opened easily, but the third and fourth chests, whose magic had been forbidden to her, remained sealed by the warding spells her father had placed upon them. With great effort, she carried each chest to the base of the ladder, and then used a teleportation spell to get each of them to the surface. The effort nearly exhausted her, and she had to rest after each one, and before she could climb the ladder again. Each chest must have weighed 40 pounds or more, and she could not recall ever moving so much weight with magic and not blacking out from the effort.

She made several trips, and used the wheelbarrow to take the four chests and the tools and knives to the largest cave that she knew of in the nearby cliffs. That cave had three entrances that she knew of, two of which were too small for a grown man to pass through, and the largest was fairly well hidden. Then she returned to the workshop and gathered the herbs and rare ingredients for spells that she knew her father had there, and which would be difficult or impossible for her to replace. She took those to the cave as well. Last, she took a ceremonial sword, a magically inscribed dagger, and several other tools and devices that she had seen her father use to make magic. When she was done, nothing remained in the workshop to imply that it had ever been anything but a storage room for winter food supplies, and perhaps a safe haven in the event of major storms.

The only building that had remained standing was a chicken coop. It had been far enough from the house and barn not to catch fire, and too unimportant for the marauders to bother to burn. Dark Wind gathered the straw from the nesting boxes, and every other burnable thing that she could find, and carried them to the workshop. She placed the remains of her parents and of the family dogs at the base of the workshop ladder, and then heaped the burnable materials atop them. Finally, Dark Wind used one of the cantrips that her father had taught to her, to ignite a flame and turn the piled rubbish into a pyre, burning her parents remains to ashes.

Then she turned back to a wolf, and she and her brothers dragged branches across the ground, obscuring her Human footprints, and the traces of their actions.

Back at the cave where she had stashed her father's precious magical lore, Sarah cast a warding spell on each of the cave openings, so that only she or a wolf could pass through them and enter the cave. To anyone else, the way would seem to be blocked by fallen rocks.

===

When Dark Wind and her brothers returned to the back, Midnight greeted them with news.

"I think we found the men and dogs that were attacking you. They are dead, but I do not understand why. Come with me. Perhaps you can make sense of it," he said.

Dark Wind followed the wolf to a deep ravine, not far from the cave she had been trapped in.

"Look down there. Their remains are on the sharp rocks below us," Midnight stated.

"They jumped into that abyss? But why? It is too wide for any man or dog to leap across, and deep enough that the fall would almost certainly be fatal. Why would they do that?" Dark Wind asked. She could see six men and six dogs down there. The men had been armed with crossbows, and wore the same strange tunics and armor as the men that had attacked her home. She recognized at least two of the men as among those whose faces had leered at her through the crack, as they shot crossbow bolts at her.

"That is what confuses me. They did not jump. I have searched the ground on both sides of this ravine. There are no tracks and no scent trail from their passing. And see how badly their bodies are broken? It is as if some great bird lifted them high into the air, and dropped them onto the rocks. Like a sea bird trying to open a clam by dropping it," Midnight observed.

"No trail here at all? What about at the cave where you found me?" Dark Wind asked.

"I looked there first. Their trail from the farm to your mother and from there to that cave was very clear. Some of them reeked of the water that burns, and they made no attempt to hide their trail. A yearling puppy could have followed it," Midnight stated. "But there were no tracks or scent trails at all leading away from the cave. None. The man-prints and dog tracks all led one way - to the cave. None led away from it. Very strange."

"The water that burns? You mean the wines and stronger drinks that men make?" Dark Wind asked.

"We have no word for it, but yes. We have seen man drink it, and we know it makes men reckless and careless. They seem to use it to overcome their own fears. It burns the throat and makes us ill, but we know its scent," Midnight said.

Dark Wind thought for a moment, and then sighed. "I think I know how they died. I did this to them. I must have teleported them away from me. Father taught me how to use magic to make a coin or stone vanish from one place and reappear somewhere else. He even taught me to make it go someplace that I could not see. But if I tried to do it with something that was too heavy, I passed out. I must have teleported those men and their dogs. The last thing I remember was shouting for them to go away. I... made them appear here, or somewhere far above this spot. It's the only thing that makes sense. You said I slept like a dead thing for two days, right? I probably would, if I tried to teleport all of them at once. I've never managed to make more than a large chest teleport before, without passing out."

===

That night, Dark Wind shifted to the form of a small black dog, and went into the village. She listened to the people in the streets, and sat by the window in the tavern, and curled up under a pew in the church, and listened to what was being said. It did not take long for her to hear enough to know what had happened.

The village priest had witnessed the 'demonic possession' of a farmer's son, and he had blamed her family with cursing the boy, because his affliction happened after he visited their farm. It had been the same boy that had whipped the horse with thorns. The boy himself had gone insane, and had slowly bled to death as the nightmares, or what they villagers called the 'demonic possession' returned every time he tried to sleep. The priest could offer no other explanation for the wounds that appeared out of nowhere on the boy's flesh, as he screamed in his sleep. So the church had sent their mercenaries to slay the 'demons' - Dark Wind's parents and herself.

That night the villagers found the remains in the ravine. And they were saying that the girl had not been found yet, and must still be out there, in the form of a terrible demon. They resolved to hunt her until they killed her.

Dark Wind thought the real demon had been the savage, heartless boy. She did not regret that she had killed him with that nightmare spell. It surprised her, however, that the spell had done anything worse than giving him a bad time sleeping. Her mother had never told her that oneromancy could cause physical damage like that.

The boy deserved to be punished. But her parents did not. In their fear and superstition, the villagers and the priest, seeing demons and evil where there was none, had created a far worse situation. Dark Wind would get revenge for their deaths. If they dared to hunt her, and to call her a demon, then she would make them have a reason to fear her.

She returned to the village each night, until she was certain that she knew the names and homes of each person in the village that had agreed to send the mercenaries to kill her family. And then she returned to the wolves, and to the cave and her father's magical lore, to plot her vengeance.

Dark Wind was eight years old. But she was no longer a child.