The Bewitching Hour

✧ chapter ten: by moonlight

Lance would say that he knows the Olkari woods that frame the Feldakor mountains like the back of his hand, but he would be lying if he did so.

The truest truth is that these woods are so dense and so vast that he wouldn't know them if he spent a hundred years there. And this is what he loves most about the woods. It's the exact opposite of Plaht in that there is always something there that he has yet to see.

He DOES know them well enough that he doesn't often get lost. There are proper pathways through the section just north of town where the brush has been cut back, and he knows how to navigate those and how to find his way back to them when he wanders away. He knows how to get to the foot of the mountains, where to find berries and mushrooms and crystal caves, and how to make his way to the wiebian swamplands. He knows certain parts well enough to occasionally join the Kinkades for their hunts.

Tonight, Lance is in search of caves once more, but the word "cave" is perhaps a bit loose. Many of them are more like holes or dips or crevices in the face of the rock that contain small amounts of crystal. Lance has mapped out dozens of these smaller nooks. Some of them connect through tunnels that are often so small that he won't risk trying to crawl through them and getting stuck there to die an embarrassing death. Most of these caves are low-tier. The crystals they grow are abundant, but not worth much in terms of money or magick. Lance is always in search of bigger and better ones, where he might find those more coveted gemstones. Once he does, he can always come back to re-harvest when they grow back. The magick ones always do. Like vegetables, almost, so long as the "roots" are left intact, and he's careful to collect them properly in order to preserve them.

One would think that it would be easy to find a cave. Not so. Many of the little ones are hidden in the brush or behind collections of boulders. Some of the mountain tunnels, too, are so convoluted, so full of twists and turns, that one could explore over and over again and still miss some of its secrets. Outsiders don't often venture into the peaks of Feldakor or the woods that surround it— to those unfamiliar, it is a rather daunting mountain range, the forests dark and unwelcoming. But Lance is as much at home here, jumping from rock to rock or climbing up a tree, as he is in his own creaky farmhouse.

He's a farmer by trade, but he's an adventurer and a treasure hunter in his blood. His town and his family cannot take that from him.

It is, at first, a standard outing. Even if something about the atmosphere seems almost magickal, and even if he feels strangely compelled to remember every detail about the trees and the full moon above him and the smell of the air. He makes note of it all. And in doing so, he sees something odd. Several tiny holes dug in the dirt from which something was removed. Herbs, perhaps, or magick crystals. Lance knows now that he is not alone in the woods.

As he stalks through the trees with this new knowledge, he hears it. In the distance his ears just barely detect the sounds of twigs breaking underfoot. It's wrong, though. Not human boots. More like the haunches of some large animal. He knows this much from his excursions going bow-hunting with the Kinkades. Quietly, he draws his bow. Just in case.

Twenty feet. The sound is close. The creature, whatever it is, is pursuing him. If it's an animal he is accustomed to, it should be easy enough to frighten it away. He knows how to avoid being eaten by now, but he would be lying if he said it didn't make him nervous.

He rests, prepared for anything, back against a tree. He close his eyes and inhales a breath. He jumps out from his hiding place, bow at the ready.

Nothing.

Suddenly, there is a silence. And that's suspicious in and of itself. Lance squints, scanning the horizon, and still, there is nothing. ...An animal didn't dig those little holes, did it? What use does an animal have for medicinal herbs?