Carys, Tegwyn’s sister, looked much like her brother overall. She didn’t have the horns and the flowers growing in her hair were red rather than white, but otherwise their appearances were extremely similar. She was a priestess of Villthyrial, dedicated to healing both plant and animal life, and immediately set about tending to the injured dragon.
It was interesting to watch the Dryad at work. Jadis was used to Eir’s sort of healing, where she simply held out her hands and the soothing light of her magic would wash over the wounded and restore their flesh to a whole and unblemished state. Carys’ magic worked differently. Her method felt primal in a way that Eir’s didn’t.
After clearing an area of snow, Carys drew a circle in the ground that was inscribed with various runes that looked closer to tribal pictograms than the kind of runes she saw with Aila or Sabina’s magic. Then, taking a seed from a pouch and uttering a prayer, Carys’ feet sank into the earth in the middle of the circle while the seed burst open, green branches and winding roots shooting out and growing rapidly into a sapling that sprouted from her left hand. The strange tree twisted and contorted as it sought out Vetregin.
The dragon, for his part, leaned in close, exactly as though he had experienced this kind of healing before and knew what to do. Putting his damaged paw near the Dryad, the magical sapling’s branches spread out around it, sprouting green leaves that glowed with a multicolor light. As the leaves brushed against the dragon’s scales, Jadis could see the healing start to work as broken scales mended and the flesh beneath reknit. The cracked bone of the dragon’s finger slowly straightened out as the Dryad’s healing worked its wonders upon it. Examining the rest of the dragon’s body, Jadis could see other wounds start to heal as well. The festering demon wound, though, that was a different story.
In an act that Jadis could only liken to the worst pimple ever conceived, the remains of the demon’s body began to slowly squeeze out of the hole, a rancid mix of demon flesh and old blood glopping out onto the ground with wet plops.
“The healing will take some time,” Tegwyn explained as Syd continued to watch Carys work. “We should be about our business searching out demons, yes? It seems the rest of your party have begun, as have the rest of you.”
“Yeah, we should,” Syd agreed, more than happy to put some distance between herself and the unpleasant healing process. “So far, just a few bramble fiends hiding in the snow around the grove.”
Tegwyn stared up at Syd, giving her a long and considering look.
“That is quite a skill you have, I must say. Three bodies, one soul. Were it not for my father’s detection skill, I would not believe it.”
“It definitely has its uses,” Syd replied mildly as she started walking.
“I can imagine,” Tegwyn nodded as he walked next to her, keeping pace. “Three bodies acting as one in battle would be a great boon. And I daresay having three bodies would make satisfying that many mates much easier as well.”
Syd shot a glance down at the Dryad. He didn’t seem like he was poking fun or passing judgement, just making a neutral comment.
“Yeah, yeah it does,” Syd agreed. “I’m definitely blessed in that regard.”
“Indeed you are,” Tegwyn let out a heavy sigh. “If only I were so lucky as you, friend. Not that I seek many lovers, mind you. One fine Dryad woman would do me well. Sadly, my father’s grove is rather remote and we have not had contact with any other Dryad’s in quite some time. Not much opportunity for courting, you understand.”
“I guess not,” Syd mused. “I’m guessing that’s all family back there, which means…”
“Exactly,” Tegwyn moaned melodramatically. “It has been a long, long drought and I feel myself withering by the day.”
“Well, maybe you should get out more? Travel a bit, see the world outside of this forest?” Syd suggested as the two entered the tree line. “You can’t just sit around at home waiting for the love of your life to drop into your lap. That never happens. Sure didn’t happen to me.”
“I’ll think on that,” Tegwyn replied, nodding his head in consideration of Syd’s advice. “But enough about my non-existent love life. You said you were looking for a particular demon? Do you have any specifics?”
Syd quickly went over the basics of the situation with Tegwyn, explaining that she was looking for a demon that had quite possibly possessed one of the Reavers, a woman called Eike. She was purposefully light on the details surrounding Alex since she wasn’t sure how well an outsider would react to Jadis’ attempts at demon domestication, but she was insistent on her desire to capture the demon alive.
“Alive? That will be a difficulty,” Tegwyn said as he rubbed his chin. “Demons are no lambs to be easily subdued.”
“You just leave that to me,” Syd told him as she put her helmet on. “I promise you, I can handle it.”
“I’m sure you can!” Tegwyn exclaimed. “Now, I think it is time I change into something more comfortable. Then, my friend, we can search in earnest.”
Before Jadis could ask what he meant by his words, Tegwyn promptly undid the sash that ran from his kilt and over his shoulder. The kilt fell away to the ground, revealing the buff dryad in all his naked glory. While Jadis wasn’t into men that way, she had to admit the Dryad had an admirable figure, the sort that Greek artists would have immortalized in marble. After the kilt went the sandals and Tegwyn was well and truly without a stitch of clothing on.
Syd watched curiously as the man knelt down on one knee in the snow, putting his hands onto the ground as he uttered a prayer in a language she couldn’t understand. As the Dryad prayed, a subtle green glow grew around him, though that wasn’t the only thing to grow. Small vines began to sprout from his wooden flesh, swiftly growing and wrapping around his arms, legs, and torso. Tegwyn’s form expanded, shifting away from his human-like shape into something far more beast than man. He rapidly grew in size, expanding as the vines molded together into a single surface. Soon, his outer layer was covered in long moss like fur while his hands and feet were replaced with cloven hooves. The transformation took about a minute to complete and once it was done, the Tegwyn Jadis knew was gone, replaced by a massive mossy mountain goat.
In his new form, the Dryad’s head reached almost to the same height as Syd’s. His thick neck and shoulders were bunched with powerful muscles and his body looked as solid as an oak. His horns had grown out further, curling around his long, goat-like face. He’d grown a mossy beard that hung down from his chin, though his eyes were still the same vibrant color as before the transformation.
“Wow,” Syd said, giving the Dryad a once over. “That’s amazing! Is that something all Dryads can do, or just you?”
“Bah,” Tegwyn bleated in a deep, beastly tone.
“Oh, shit, you can’t talk when you’re like that?”
“No, I can talk just fine,” Tegwyn laughed as he shook his head like a dog’s. “Just a jest! But if you don’t mind, would you pick up my clothes and sandals? You can just hang them on that tree branch over there. It’s a pain to pick things up when you don’t have fingers.”
Jadis rolled her eyes at the playful Dryad, not that he could see under her helmet. As she put his kilt and sandals up onto the tree branch as he requested, Tegwyn explained that his transformation was a product of his class, not his race. Like his sister, he too was a priest, though rather than healing magic his divine nature had manifested into shapeshifting which allowed him to better commune with nature. He had other tricks to call upon as well, though he didn’t elaborate on them. Instead, he simply told her that his class aided in the growth and rejuvenation of nature, one of the primary tenets of his patron god.
Tegwyn’s ability to transform was fascinating to Jadis. She knew that shapeshifting was possible since that was the inherent domain of Fetch like Jack, but she hadn’t expected the kind of change Tegwyn was capable of. He was more like a tree’s approximation of a mountain goat rather than a true transformation into one like she was sure Jack would have done. She openly wondered what other shapes he could take.
“I have one other shape I can assume,” Tegwyn admitted. “But it wouldn’t be as useful for searching out this demon of yours. Perhaps I’ll have occasion to show it to you another time.”
From there Syd walked with Tegwyn in beast form all the way to the top of the hill where the battle from the day before had taken place. It was easy enough to find the spot where the wagons had stood, even through the layer of snow coating the land. Using his big head to push through the snow, Tegwyn dug up the frozen blood from where Gunnar and Sorcha had been badly wounded. He sniffed the ground loudly, using his beast nose to track the scents of those who had fought in that spot. Eike’s blood had stained the snow there as well, so finding her scent among the others was easy enough for one with the right senses.
Once he found the scent he was looking for, Tegwyn moved along, heading in the same direction that Jadis and Kerr had searched the night before. He followed the trail, just as they had, eventually coming to a stop in the small clearing where Kerr had also lost the trail. Circling the area, Tegwyn kept his nose to the ground as he sniffed out any remaining traces of either Eike or Alex. His huge nose plowed through the snow, pushing it aside and turning it up as he went, rooting for any hint of a track or drop of blood.
“Nothing,” Tegwyn snorted, blowing some snow out of his nostrils. “The trail ends here. Wherever the demon went, it wasn’t on foot.”
Syd looked up, eyes scanning the tall trees surrounding them.
“You think they could have scaled the trees?”
“That or they flew,” Tegwyn offered with a surprisingly human shrug despite his animalistic form. “Who can say?”
“Well, let’s keep looking,” Syd huffed, her breath misting in the winter air. “I’ll keep a look out above while you check out any likely hiding spots you know about. I’m not giving up that easily.”
The search went on for several hours after that. Syd stuck near Tegwyn while Jay and Dys followed at a wider distance, accompanied by the rest of Fortune’s Favored. The going was slow, partly because of the care they put into the search, but mostly because there were still quite a few demons lingering nearby. Not that they posed much of a threat. Most were bramble fiends, along with a few twisted wretches and bone thieves. Killing off such demons was of such little consequence to her by that point that Jadis used the encounters as more of an opportunity to test her newfound strength as well as the capabilities of her companions.
One quick experiment later and Jadis had an answer to one question. Bramble fiends were physically incapable of piercing Thea’s skin with their thorns after her most recent increase in Fortitude.
As Jadis and her companions made short work of any demons that had the misfortune of running into them, Jadis also got to see how Tegwyn handled himself in a fight. Whenever a demon approached his shaggy form, the Dryad would charge them, head down, horns forward. Smashing into bone thieves and twisted wretches alike, he would either trample them under his hooves or crush them against trees with his powerful headbutts. At one point, Syd watched in amusement as Tegwyn sent one bone thief flying through the air as he launched it over his back with a toss of his horns. Before it could land behind him, he kicked with both back hooves, rocketing the hapless demon with incredible force into a tree some thirty feet away.
“Are you sure none of these demons will suit your purposes?” Tegwyn asked after stomping another wretch into the ground. “They are sadly plentiful right now and I haven’t caught a whiff of your lost one so far.”
“No, none of these,” Syd shook her head. “The one I’m looking for is… unique.”
“Then I hope for your sake that it hasn’t already been killed.”
That was a definite possibility, Jadis knew. Alex, whether it had possessed Eike or not, could have been killed by one of the others without them knowing any better. Or Alex could have been killed by the dragon either last night or earlier in the morning while it waited outside the grove. Alex might even have been killed by another demon at some point, considering the little demonling seemed to have no particular love or care for its own kind. The only thing that kept Jadis’ hopes up that Alex still had to be out there somewhere was the fact that Eike’s body was still missing.
Eventually though, as the day wore on, Jadis was forced to make the difficult decision to end the search. They had found no leads after hours of investigation and she could only devote so much time to looking for her little demon. As much as she wanted to find Alex, there were still other things to be done. She needed to speak with Yorath about her situation, which was definitely going to take some time, and they also needed to work on getting ready to depart. They honestly couldn’t stay for too much longer since the snows were getting deeper and the winter was getting worse. If they lingered too long, they stood a real chance of being snowed in and would be stuck at the Dryad grove for months, at least until the spring thaw. Jadis had idly joked about wanting to stay in the grove, but that really wasn’t an option. They all needed to get back to Far Felsen; there were too many responsibilities waiting for them to delay that long.
All Jadis could do was hope that Alex somehow found its way back to her.
With the sun past its zenith and heading for the western mountain ridgeline, Jadis and everyone else who had been searching returned to the entrance of the grove where Vetregin and Carys still waited. While they hadn’t found Alex, at least they had cleared many, many more demons from the valley, making the forest a safer place for the Dryads.
As the group approached the entry way to the grove, Jadis saw that Carys was still working her healing magics upon Vetregin. Wanting to make some kind of peace offering, Jay leaned down to Eir and asked if she would be willing to try and use some of her healing on the dragon. Eir was willing, though she had very little magic left considering how little time she’d had to pray and rejuvenate her reserves, plus the magic she’d used during the search for Alex. Her new spell, sadly, had yielded no results.
“Hello there!” Carys smiled at Jay and Eir, the woman’s pretty sea green eyes flashing with mirth. Before Jay or Eir could offer any healing assistance, Carys continued. “I have something here that I think you lost, friend. I think it best it was returned to you.”
She held out the hand that wasn’t filled with tree branches, passing a piece of a steel rod about two feet long to Jay. It took a moment, but Jadis soon realized what it was.
“Did you…?”
“From Vetregin’s nose? Yes,” Carys nodded, the little flowers in her hair bobbing with the movement. “Don’t worry. He isn’t as angry with you now that I’ve removed the remains of your spear.”
Eir covered her mouth with a delicate hand to hide her gasp of dismay while Jay eyed the huge dragon as it stared at her with unsettling focus.
“…Thanks.”
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