Storm Season | Shelha Series 2 | ✔

New Arrival

The South forest wasn't anything like the elders had described. Mind you, they'd never been there nor talked to anyone who had, so their descriptions had always been a little suspect.

Their descriptions of anything, really.

Loki gazed up at the trees and their half-dried, crinkled leaves. The South Forest was like an understory to a forest that didn't exist. It was an overgrown streambank fallen into disarray, underfed and underwatered, its formerly dense canopy shriveling and letting light through where there should have been no light. Scrappy weeds had sprung up in the sun patches. Loki kicked one, uprooting it in a puff of dust. This was the forest where wars took place, where tyrants rose and fought and fell, where the Royals had once reigned. Empty, dry and weed-ridden. He hadn't even seen a Coppertail, and he'd been here four days.

It took the buzz of the fourth Drakon of the day to shake Loki from his reverie. A glint through the trees indicated that this flight too had legbands. No territorial race banded together without some higher power's reward. Loki bounded after the creatures until they landed at a river. The Drakon alliance seemed to have claimed a drinking spot here, because within a hundred heartbeats two more flights had landed on the rocks to dip their mouthparts in the water. Loki watched them leave again. They all went west. If his hypothesis was correct and these were Winter's Drakons, then in that direction would be Winter's camp.

The elders had stories about Winter. Years ago there had been a war on the North Flats, the tundra flatland. Rebels from beyond the mountains had begun to wreak havoc with the intent of displacing the native Coppertail types. Spies would finagle their way into herds, to gain their trust before leading them to disaster. It was said the rebels used avalanches to kill their enemies, manipulating rocks to set off land and snowslides that could crush dozens in one go.

Winter had rallied the rest of the North against the threat. For years before Loki had been born, the two sides had battled across the base of the mountains. In the end, the rebels' own tactics had sealed their fate. Pushed back into the mountains, they had grown desperate and increasingly reckless. At last their weapon had failed. A landslide meant for Winter had broken loose early. Half of her army had been destroyed, but the rebels themselves had been wiped out.

The fact that this cast Winter as a hero did not sit entirely well with Loki. Nor did the assertion that she had attempted to stop the Forester race from destroying their own home, poisoned as they were by the blood gems they were hiding. Loki had never met a Forester, but it seemed unlikely that one would set fire to its own forest.

The edge of Winter's territory was as clear as any creature could make it. Drawing one claw along the scent border, Loki turned away. He hadn't really been expecting his arrival at Winter's lair to solve all his problems, and it was just as well. It hadn't really solved anything.

The next morning required a trip back to accessible river to drink and soak his dry fur. Loki returned to the meadow just in time to spot a patrol on the territory's edge. He froze. There was a creature in the grass behind them. His seventh sense prickled, tracking it as it circled. The grass wasn't even rustling. With a bloodcurdling screech, a Coppertail with a twisted face leaped into the patrol. Before they could scatter, a shape like a Mountain Cat appeared. It lifted the disfigured creature like it was a kitten and shook it, snapping its neck. The body thumped to the ground.

"Are you alright?" Loki heard Winter ask through the buzzing in his ears. He wanted to shake his head, to make it stop, but he couldn't move.

It had been the same snap as a burning tree.

When Winter and the patrol were gone, Loki spun around and kicked the nearest object—a tree; it was always a tree—with all his might. He didn't want to be here. His enemy's enemy may not be his friend, but he didn't want to kill them. And how was he supposed to catch a Forester in a forest the size of the North Flats? The place went on forever, each hundred tail-lengths as run-down and dried out as the last. This wasn't the forest of legends, this was the forest of filth. Drakon filth and Hyenar filth and the leftover bones of hunting Coppertails' meals. Dried leaves and small trees and a complete lack of clean water. The fact that he didn't want to go home any more than he wanted to stay didn't make it any better. Loki kicked the tree until he had left a visible scar on its bark, then looked at the scar and felt bad about making it. What had the tree done to deserve that?