Word Count: 1133
Chapter 1.6
Wound tended, Lorne retired to the barn so he could rest. He fell asleep to the sounds of people shouting and moving things about, of hammers on wood and metal and the whoosh of the local blacksmith's forge. Alvena and the others would see to the village and make sure they were ready for the creature's next visit.
Some time later, he woke to the sound of swearing and the tawng of an arrow being fired. He had no idea how long he'd been asleep, but he jolted upright with a dagger drawn, eyes darting about the barn. He'd decided to sleep on the ground this time.
"Fuck!" Vena said, loudly, and Lorne twisted to peer in the general direction of the elf woman. "Stay still, damn you!"
The barn was dark--which didn't tell him much since it would be dark anyway--and there were only a small handful of torches lit above him in the loft. He grimaced and climbed to his feet, moving to get a better look up into the loft--which wasn't much of a better look, to be honest. Lorne ignored the horse staring at him and frowned.
"Vena? What's wrong?" he called, concerned. "Is it back?"
"No, it is not the creature," she hissed and Lorne decided it was best to go find the ladder and climb up to see what in the hells she was on about. "It is a pigeon."
That made him pause briefly before he finished climbing and peeked over the top of the ladder into the loft to see her. "A what?"
"A bird!" she growled, firing another arrow out the loft window. Lorne raised an eyebrow. "And it is...fast. Why can I not hit it?"
Lorne stared at her as she seethed with frustration for a moment then climbed fully into the loft and moved to join her by the window. "What in all the lands is a pigeon?"
Vena sent him a scathing look. "You have never seen a pigeon before? What rock have you been sleeping beneath for the last few years?"
He crouched beside her and peered out the loft window, frowning. "If you count an isolated, ruined castle as rock," he said, trying to figure out what bird she was talking about, "then I suppose, technically, I have been?"
She snorted. "You are a strange human."
Lorne sent her a look. "One of my ancestors was an elf, though I doubt that has much effect on my bloodline anymore."
Vena studied him for a moment and then turned back to the window. "I suppose, if one considers you quite handsome to a more-than-usual degree, perhaps."
He nodded at that and continued to look for the bird. "So, this pigeon. What's it look like?"
At that moment, there was a soft coo and a grey bird with black and white specks across the wings alighted on the edge of the loft. They stared at it for a moment and then Vena pointed at it.
"Like that."
"Huh."
The pigeon strutted back and forth a few times, head bobbing and cooing softly before Vena raised her bow and aimed an arrow at it. She missed. Lorne was surprised. It was like the arrow went sideways. The pigeon stopped, cocked its head at them and cooed again. And then it took off like nothing had happened.
Lorne stared after it for a moment, then cleared his throat. "Well," he said, "that was weird."
They spent several hours sitting watch in the loft, calmly discussing pigeons and birds and magic, trying to figure out why Vena had missed at such a close range. Lorne didn't think she could have missed when it was less than two feet from them and felt it was odd that the arrow had gone wide. It was even odder than the pigeon didn't seem to care beyond giving them what had to be an amused look, now that he considered it properly.
Of course, that didn't mean the issue of the creature was gone.
It just mean the thing didn't show up that night. Or the next. Or the one after that.
Which left them lingering in the village for nearly a week before it returned.
~*~*~*~
Lorne stood panting over an injured Issy, glowering into the shadows around them. They'd taken to setting up a two-person watch over the village. It had been a long week of planning and preparing, of digging traps and teaching the villages how to fight--as Vena had been doing for months now--and now, here they were, with a seemingly dead beast and his little brother injured.
"Are you sure it is dead?" Vena asked from somewhere behind him and Lorne shook his head.
"It certainly looks dead, but I wouldn't put much stock in appearances right now. You remember how it tossed your own arrow back at us last time?"
"Yes."
It had done that again, with almost every arrow Alvena had fired at it until, at last, they'd tricked it into one of the traps they had set up around the edges of the village. Luckily, they'd only lost two villagers the last time it'd shown up and, amazingly, none tonight.
"Lorne...?" Issy asked, sounding pained. "It is dead, right?"
"I hope so," he said, edging forwards a step to nudge a giant, limp paw. Nothing happened, so he nudged it again. The beast twitched and that resulted in a soft twang and an arrow sailing past to lodge itself into the beast's hide, somewhere near the hip.
There was a beat of absolute stillness, the silence so deep that it felt like they were barely breathing, and then the beast began to disinegrate right before their eyes. Lorne stared at it, eyes wide as the fur and flesh seemed to melt right off the bones and then those bones crumbled into dust, leaving nothing behind but a pile of ash.
"Well," Vena said, coming to stand beside him. "That was a surprise."
Lorne cleared his throat and nodded. "You can say that again."
"You know magical creatures are the only things that might do this when they die, right?" Vena quiered softly and Lorne glanced towards her.
"Really?"
"Mmhmm." She looked at Issy, who was looking pale and pained. "As you would know, Islwyn, since you killed five dragons."
Issy winced. "Actually... I have a confession to make about that..."
Lorne eyed his little brother warily. "What kind of confession?"
His brother looked away, avoiding his gaze. "I never actually fought any dragons," he whispered. "They were all dead or dying by the time I got there...and then they did...that..." He pointed at the beast. "Exactly that."
Lorne looked from his brother to the remains of the beast--nothing now but ash--and back. "So when you said you killed the dragons...you were lying?"
"In a sense?" Issy muttered, shrugging. "Yes and no. The dying ones asked me to finish them... so I guess I killed, maybe...two of them?"
He sighed deeply. "We need to work on your finer points, I think."
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