He didn’t know if it were the noises of wood creaking under tension or the dull pain that radiated out from both his left shoulder and his lower back that had woken him up. But as Vac Fadric opened his eyes, the world, as much of it as he could see through the obscuring branches with their heavy dark green leaves, looked vaguely upside down.

  As he tried to right himself, the pain from his shoulder set up a hew and cry to all of his other joints, which immediately joined in together to make him let out a low moan. The reckless bullies then began to pulse oddly as the world around him bobbed slowly, as if a light breeze played with a falling leaf.

  Vac Fadric turned his head and something behind him made a ripping noise. He didn’t know if it was his tunic, his back muscles, or something even more dire. As he listened, and concentrated on the sounds and the sensory input from the rest of his body, it felt and sounded like his tunic was being torn. A cold flash of air actress his lower back told him that his shirt was either ripping, or just being raised somehow.

  If pressed, he would admit that he wasn’t thinking all too clearly at the moment, and so made an attempt to concentrate. But the cobwebs that encased his mind would not be brushed aside so easily.

  But, with that noise, he would have bet that ripping fabric was involved here, slow mental processes or not.

  It was then that he noticed the bobbing motion wasn’t just his vision wavering due to injury or fatigue, nor was it the exhaustion, the claws of which he could feel digging into the basse of his skull where it met his spine. The bobbing motion was being caused by his body’s own movements as it hung listlessly in the branches of a tree.

  Slow realization crept across his consciousness, he now hung over a clearing from a branch of a thickly canopied tree. It looked like a very sturdy korwood, the thickly plated bark a deterrent to all but the sharpest of axes. Its tasty early spring fruit nowhere to be seen on this autumn day.

  Looking slowly about, he saw that his feet dangled at least two strides above the clearing floor in the forest below. It felt familiar, if not welcoming. Something was very wrong, and Vac Fadric took a few moments to try to knit together something coherent from the jagged rubble of his recent memories.

  There was something about a young woman. And monsters in the dark. And a memory of his thoughts being dulled and obscured by… someone with the Talent who was far stronger than he had been to resist.

  Then a hazy, maddened memory lit with chaos as his body was thrown through a dozen different closed doors, shattering each as he passed if the pains he was suffering told any kind of truth.

  The swaying, rocking sensation returned. The world writhed, and a mild nausea returned. He attempted to focus his thoughts by controlling his breathing. Counting the inhale, counting a slightly longer hold, and then counting further to extend his exhale.

  As his mind sharpened fractionally, a voice called out to him, “Sleep, child…” and the cobwebs returned just that quickly.

  But, pain is a bully.

  Pain can make you stop doing something, anything, even when it is something you know is right, and must be done. It takes willpower to overcome things like doubt, fear, and especially pain. Some of his instructors, martial instructors mostly, praised pain as one of their favorite peers. “A Noble Teacher for the student who learns to take heed... “ one instructor had admonished a much younger Vac Fadric in a gloomy, graystone keep on a long ago day.

  But Vac Fadric knew that was a lie.

  Maybe it had been one they themselves had been told so often by their own tutors that the men had taken it as a Truth. More likely than not it was the lie they now used to convince themselves. Because pain is a merciless bully that always wants to have its own way, no matter the topic. And like all bullies, it cannot be reasoned with. One can persevere, conquer, suffer stoically through, or finally submit to pain.

  As he stretched and twisted his frame, all of the other, lesser, pains fled as one greater than all of those others combined, rampaged through his body, locking his joints into place and eliciting a short startled scream from his throat.

  A raging pillar of flame had shot through his lower back, just below where he estimated his right kidney to be, and burrowed deeply into his body. Reaching down to his stomach, he could feel the broken wood of the thick branch on which his body had landed jutting out from the skin of his lower abdomen, a blood soaked handspan just above his belt.

  He wanted to vomit.

  A small voice spoke to him again in Auld, its accent musical. “Go back to sleep. Let yourself sink into slumber and this pain will float away with cares and worries… all strife… will end...”

  It echoed around him, sounding now like a chorus singing him to slumber from the forest.

  Through pain that made him not want to open his sweat and filth encrusted lids, Vac Fadric slowly moved his eyes about clearing below him. Scanning, seeking, searching for something he knew shouldn’t be there. When he found nothing but the remains of a hastily abandoned camp, he slowly scanned the branches around where he hung in the tree.

  Still, the slight voices, barely heard of the sounds of the forest about him, sang sweetly on of sleep, happiness of the peace that awaited behind closed eyes, and the joys of the dreams yet to be had.

  More cobwebs. More thoughts that should have been sharp as glass shards were now dulling like old stones in a fast river.

  Something was in the tree with him, he knew. He couldn’t see it. Or them, whatever they were. But… he could feel them, brushing about at the edges of his perceptions.

  It stung the corners of his mind, vinegar and salt rubbed into a freshly skinned patch of flesh.

  And then the voice came again.

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  “Smell the autumn leaves on the wind… feel the chill in the air… sleep now, and all will be better.”

  But that’s not what the voices were actually saying. He slowly shook his head as the voice curled around his ears and caressed all of his nerves as it traced languidly down his spine. It was as if he could hear someone singing in the next room as he listened to someone speaking softly in this room.

  There were blurry spots in his vision that he had originally thought to be grit in his eyes, or injuries making themselves known with splotches of indistinct areas in his sight. But now he saw them moving, all around him in the clearing and even up here in the boughs of the tree in which his body now hung.

  Things smaller than cats… possibly the size of rats, or squirrels… three of the blurs now inched along the branch of another tree that jutted closest to him where he hung.

  The slow shaking of his head pulled several muscles in and along his back, and the spike of intense pain revivified his focus. The voices weren't asking him to sleep, they were not trying to sooth him. Not at all. They attempted to lull him, maybe.

  “Sleep, meat! Your time in this World has passed! Feed the Family! Feed the Clan! Feeding the Forest is the fate of Man!”

  “Huh.” He said, his voice as blurred and fuzzy as his vision. “rhymes…”

  Moving his head to follow the little blurs set the branch on which Vac Fadric hung swaying in a painfully bobbing and laborious arc as some slight weight shifted and moved unsteadily between where he was stuck and the trunk of the tree.

  As the thing on his own branch, the one who “sang” to him, moved closer along the branch, Vac Fadric breathed deeper, and centered his thoughts. Waiting.

  With a small push of his Will through his Talent, his vision sharpened beyond the world’s flimsy borders and into the greater reality. Color and sound flooded into his mind as he Delved about him, his mind now fully engaged with his Talent to show what lay beyond illusions and glamours.

  Small motions, incremental vibrations along the branch. A tug on the back of his tunic.

  He waited.

  On the branch jutting close to him from another tree there crouched three small man-shaped things. They had four arms, two legs, and their otherwise human looking little faces sported four nearly all black, obsidian-like eyes, their higher set of darkly shining eyes spaced more widely apart nearer their temples.

  Each little horror wore mottled tunics of very finely woven cloth, and matched leather jerkins and hose of doeskin, or some other very light tan leather. They looked like incredibly supple garments, and as he allowed his Delving to draw in details, and pull thoughts and ideas together with the minutia he observed, he could see that the leather they each wore was made from the choicest hide splits from the skins of a Piincar human.

  Vac Fadric repressed a shudder and continued to stare wide eyed off into the distance, so as not to alert his predators that he knew he was now the prey they sought.

  Each held a small, black tipped spear, equal to their own height, and had two more small spears held across their backs by bandoliers.

  They wore no shoes, but had toes that looked longer and clawed like a squirrel’s might be, to help grip the branches on which they walked.

  The three who watched him from the branch of the oak tree looked at him with stoic hostility.

  The one who had been crawling up his back, and now stood on his chest, looked exultant. He now readied his own little black tipped spear to thrust into what Vac Fadric assumed would be a killing blow into his neck, allowing this little warrior to claim a victor for himself and his people. Possibly allowing them to make thousands of fine little leather jenkins from his own darker, Ocre, skin, and many meals made from his meat and organs.

  …I might make a very nice pie… or a thousand… for these hunters, I imagine I’m quite savory… he thought as he readied himself.

  The ethereal singing increased, and the little hunter on his chest adjusted his footing, as Vac Fadric, releasing his Delving spell, swung his right arm up in a quick arc, his hand darting in to grab the little hunter about its torso, pinning three of its arms to its body and making the spear it had held tumble from its small hands, down into the clearing below.

  A shattering wail exploded out from the trees that surrounded him as Vac Fadric held the struggling little man. He tried his hardest to not crush the little monster in his grip. The creature was stronger than he might have thought, judging by its size, as it used it’s one free arm to try to push back his thumb and escape. The little mouth was stuck in an “O” shape as he emitted what could only be considered a war cry because of the expression on his pinched little features. Anyone hearing it from more than a stride away might mistake it for the call of a kitta bird, the loud, bright blue pests that were known for angrily chattering at passersby.

  This noise, along with the screams of all of his fellows, was beginning to get deafening, and Vac Fadric wondered if his ears would start bleeding from the vocal assault.

  With a distinct tug upward and then immediately down on the sleeve of his left arm, Vac Fadric noticed two of the small spears had lodged in his tunic.

  What could only have been two or three more of the little weapons had been hurled from behind him, and now lodged in his curly mess of hair. One had made it to his scalp and stung horribly. These petite beings probably only threw their spears in moments of dire need, as they lacked the heft to pose a real threat when hurled. At least when hurled as something the size of a human, he guessed. Otherwise they probably used the tiny things more like melee spears. He was just glad none of them carried bows.

  He furrowed his brow as he let his eyes play over the branches of the trees around him and, lifting his prisoner aloft, gave the minute hunter a vigorous shake.

  “STOP THIS! NOW!” He yelled out in Aulde, figuring it was something they spoke, judging from the glamours they had been trying to cast on him moments before.

  Several of the tribesmen stared at him, wide eyed in their anger and fear as he held on to their hunting party member. All that he could see gripped their remaining spears in little white knuckled hands.

  Two of the three on the oak branch stepped forward, changing their grips on their spears, as if to throw. Vac Fadric moved his thumb, to press its pad to the throat of his prisoner, his wide thumbnail under the hunter’s chin, pushing his head back. The little face looked horrified, and all four shiny black eyes closed. He let out a high pitched whine.

  Vac Fadric felt for a moment like a bully. Until he noticed the vest the little hunter wore had a fur lined collar that looked distinctly like a matched set of finely trimmed eyebrows. The two fierce hunters standing on the oak branch looked back at their third member, who raised a hand, motioning for the two to settle down. For now at least.

  And they obeyed, For now. They lowered their heads, eyes closed, to show their compliance.

  He closed his own eyes for a moment as another wave of pain crawled up his back from where he was pinned to the broad branch. It caused a minor spasm, which made him jerk in response. This excess movement had been one move too many for the korwood tree, which decided to cut its losses and with a loud CRACK the branch on which he hung was set free from the trunk, sending him to the clearing below.

  Wide eyed, he realized he would probably crush the hunter in his hand to death when he hit the ground. Knowing this impact could very well be his last, Vac Fadric considered his options. He needed to cushion his own fall. He also needed to keep his prisoner alive, otherwise their entire tribe would descend upon him as he lay on the forest floor.

  Without thinking about it further, Vac Fadric hurled his prisoner up at his waiting tribesmen on the now rapidly retreating branch, sending the little hunter screaming back upward through the branches of the canopy to be grabbed from the air by them. Their jubilant cheer at the rescue was the last thing he saw before he hit the floor of the clearing.