The black man stumbled through the trees, running as fast as he could. The Hunters on guard quickly raised their weapons at him. "No, no! Let me through! I'm a Siense! I am-was part of Captain Adrian Hood's squad!" The Hunters lowered their spears and swords and let the man through the entrance.
He quickly rushed to where he knew a Commander would be. He told the Siense woman what had happened (leaving out that he knew one of the Karsan's identities). A frown grew on the woman's face as he went on. "-I think they're dead." He finished.
She paused in thought. "... And these were the Karsans you were sent to collect?"
"I believe so - but they weren't where Adrian was told they would be."
"Can you identify any of the Karsan's exact species?"
The black man stood up straighter. "Yes. A Siren - according to Adrian - and a Sound Elemental."
"And the other two?"
"I have no idea. I was locked in a fight with the Sound Elemental - I wasn't watching them."
The woman stood still for a moment. Then, she ordered him to follow her.
They made their way through wooden halls and corridors that the black man had been forbidden to enter before. Commanders and Head Commanders (Hunters and Siense alike) passed them as they strode directly towards a large, old wooden door at the end of the hall.
The woman knocked. A faint 'come in' passed through the thick door. She pushed it open.
On the other side, two Hunters and a Siense were sat in conversation around a circular table. The man identified the Siense as Henry Green (the leader of the Siense), and the two Hunters as Onomia and her daughter Hermia.
The Siense woman beside him cleared her throat. "George Dash," she motioned to the man. "Part of Captain Adrian Hood's squad, claims that the four Karsans they were sent to capture in the mountains attacked them in the woods. He believes Adrian Hood and Robert Dranger to be dead."
The two leaders and heir studied George intensely. Henry Green said, "You're sure it was the Karsans you were sent to capture?"
"Yes. There were four of them - as Adrian said there would be."
"Do you remember where you were at the time?" Onomia asked.
"Yes - I looked at the map just before it happened."
Henry pointed at the large map they had laid out before them. "Show us."
~*~
Dalisay and Elliot were once again leaning against each other, blue lightning sparkling in Elliot's eyes. Kiara stared into the blazing fire that seemed almost invisible in the daylight, her eyes were glazed over. Marla glanced at her worriedly. She put a hand on Kiara's shoulder. Kiara jolted into the present.
"You okay?" Marla asked carefully.
Kiara sighed and moved her eyes to the ground. "What do you think?"
Marla frowned. "... That man was him - your…?" She signed, Kiara glancing up to read.
"Yeah." Kiara said, her voice dry. "Yeah, that was him."
Marla rubbed her shoulder sympathetically. "...You know… It really looked like you were gonna kill him there, for a moment."
"I was." Her voice grumbled.
Marla watched Kiara's fingers fidget. "... I wouldn't have blamed you."
Kiara looked at her incredulously. "... I was gonna kill him."
"And you would've been completely justified."
"Marla!"
"Tell me I'm wrong - I'm not saying it's what you should do. It's just you wouldn't be unjustified if you did." Kiara still looked as if she was beating herself up about it, so Marla carried on, "Kiara… He killed your mom. Everyone would have understood if-"
"Everyone doesn't know."
"Then they would have thought you just killed a random Hunter! -Like they did!"
"Except he's not a random Hunter…" Kiara signed. Marla didn't know what else to say to her friend. A rush of emotion swelled in her chest. She wanted so bad to be able to say something-anything that would make the girl feel better. She raised her hands to sign something, but the words wouldn't come. Kiara was watching her raised hands from the corner of her eye, and sighed and shook her head slightly at the ground when she realised Marla had nothing to say.
A small sense of guilt settled in Marla's stomach at the sight of the girl's black frizzy hair falling into her face from behind her ear. Marla's raised hand found itself reaching to push the hair back in it's place. Kiara turned her head to look at her. Marla's hand froze at her ear, the hair tickling her fingers. Her green eyes met Kiara's - which Marla only saw as white due to her colourblindness, but had asked Dalisay what colour they actually were repeatedly, to which she eventually responded to with 'something between a pink and a purple'.
Marla felt as if she should say something, but really didn't want to move her hand, or break whatever silent moment was happening between them.
Unfortunately, her stomach did it for her. It grumbled loudly, protesting the prolonged absence of food. Marla quickly retracted her hand. A small blush grew across her cheeks, joining the birthmark that resided on her right one.
"Hungry?" Kiara asked, obviously knowing the answer. A small smile had made it's way onto her lips, and Marla felt at least some sense of accomplishment at managing to draw her mind to something else.
Marla forced a laugh, "Yeah, I guess so."
Kiara shuffled to her feet. "Come on, Timira and Elliot will be expecting us to have hunted and begun cooking something by the time they stop talking." She retrieved her daggers from the ground. Marla stood up and grabbed her spear.
The two of them trudged into the forest. They chatted lightheartedly as they searched for a target.
It was Kiara who spotted the rustling of the bushes. They watched as a white Hare leaped out of the bush and started making it's way across the forest floor. "Bet you I can kill it first."
Marla took up the challenge and grinned, "Oh, you're on."
The two girls followed the Hare further into the forest, stopping whenever it stopped.
The Snowshoe Hare paused in it's travel for longer than it had before. Just as Kiara was going to attack, Marla thrust her spear forwards, piercing the animal. "I win!" She smirked.
Kiara rolled her eyes in fake frustration. Her spirits had been successfully lifted. A larger smile than before plastered itself on her face. "You always win."
"Well, I am pretty amazing at everything." Marla managed to spit out, having been momentarily struck breathless by Kiara's smile.
"It certainly seems that way." Kiara pushed her hair back, giggling slightly. The soft, half-minded sound seemed to release even more of the stress Marla had been under.
They began making their way back, walking closely together. Marla was carrying the hare in a bag that she swung over her shoulder, nudging Kiara. Kiara, who had been concentrating on Marla's muscular arms (for a totally normal and innocent reason) instead of where she had been going, lost her balance and stumbled forwards. Marla quickly reached out and grabbed her. Kiara steadied, and blushed at Marla's closeness.
"Oh God, I'm sorry. Are you okay?" Marla asked.
Kiara laughed. "I'm fine. And it's my fault - I should've been watching where I was going." Marla released her clutch on her and took a step backwards.
"Come in, we need to hurry up, Tia and Elliot will be waking up soon. Let's get back - and try not to trip up this time." Marla joked, although she would've loved the chance to hold Kiara like that again.
When they got back, they realised they needn't have worried about Dalisay and Elliot 'waking up' before they got back. The blue lightning was still zapping across Elliot's eyes. The two girls wondered what was taking them so long to finish their conversation. What was so private that they couldn't just talk about it in front of them?
~*~
Lagh Fhel Namia (the Hunter head of the Tracking department), strode through the forest, George Dash at her side. A group of ten other Hunters followed behind them.
"Just a little further." George Dash reassured, guiding the Hunters to where he had been attacked. He was exhausted compared to the others as he had to practically run to keep up with The Hunters' walking (biology had decided to give them an unfair advantage when it came to speed and endurance). The distance which would have taken any normal human days to travel on foot, had been completed by The Hunters in a little over a night.
"Here!" George Dash exclaimed suddenly. "It was around here!"
Namia ordered her trackers to fan out and search the area for any indication of where the Karsans had gone next. It was only a few seconds later when some trackers called her over. A few more metres away, two bodies laid on the ground, dried blood splattered on their clothes and ground. "Bury them." She said, before taking it upon herself to search the area.
The lead tracker crouched down low. Branches clambered to pull her hair. Namia tilted her head to the side, scanning the ground for any mistakes the Karsans had made. This was made particularly hard by all the noise her troupe was making. She closed her eyes briefly and gave a short sigh of frustration. Namia stood up, moved over to another part of the area, and did the same.
It was only after she had done this five times that Namia found anything of value. A footprint. It was relatively small - definitely not any of the men's. A tiny canopy of leaves had sheltered it from the snow that had fallen the day before. She looked beyond it and soon noticed an upturned stone, after that more clues appeared. They hadn't been as careful as she had originally thought.
Namia gave a quick 'thank you' to her Gods, and noted the direction the person had gone in. She rose and motioned for the rest of the troupe to finish up with the burial and then follow her. She'd found where they went. She hoped she could beat them to where they were going.
~*~
"Are you sure?"
"I am." Elliot said.
"One-hundred percent? It has to be one-hundred percent or we're not doing this." Kiara stated.
Elliot met her stern eyes. "One-hundred percent. I'm sure."
Kiara let out a small breath and nodded. "Okay... Okay…"
"So… Is that it? We have a plan?" Dalisay asked.
Elliot shook his head. "Not quite. We still need to know the exact rotations of the guard's shifts. But we can't do that right now."
"Right, well, if that's it, I'm gonna go to sleep." Marla said.
Elliot sat on the ground with a sigh, pulling out a roll of paper from his bag. "You put paper in your rucksack?" Kiara asked, looking at him as if he'd just done the strangest thing. He merely stared her in the eyes, daring her to say more. She met it for a few moments, but then shrugged and started walking off into the forest. "I'm just going for a quick walk."
"She says as if we haven't been walking all night." Elliot muttered. He turned to Dalisay. "Help me with this, Timira?" He gestured to the paper.
"Sure." Dalisay sat down next to him. "What is it exactly that I'm helping you with?"
"We're gonna make a map of the Hunters' hideout based on the things I can remember from the Siense's mind."
"M'kay."
Kiara's feet trudged through the sludgy snow, kicking the rocks underneath it as she went. She shoved her gloved hands into her coat pockets and tried jumping up and down to warm herself up. Her frizzy hair that she'd recently put in a tight plait (with the needed help from both Dalisay and Marla) started coming out, and a strand fell in front of her eyes, making her groan and begrudgingly pull her hands out of the warm pockets to tuck it behind her ear. A few seconds later, it came free again.
She watched as multicoloured sound waves moved away from her body. The loudest and most colourful were coming from her feet. Kiara found irony in her powers - a deaf girl can see and control sound? Hilarious, universe, just hilarious.
Just then, a brightly coloured wave came from the trees. Kiara froze. It had obviously been a loud noise. She desperately wished someone had come with her so she knew what it had been. A scream? The Hunters? Or something completely ordinary? Just to be safe, she decided she would head back. But before she could, the wave (and therefore noise) came again, and something flew out of the trees and towards her face. The source of the sound. A bird.
Kiara gave a sigh of relief and watched as the bird rested on a nearby branch. It fluffed it's wings and squawked at her again. Anxious that they were nearing the Hunter's base, Kiara used her powers to make sure the sound waves could only reach her, and went no further.
The bird seemed to do a little dance on the branch, making Kiara laugh. She couldn't remember what her laugh sounded like (she'd lost her hearing when she was 6 years old), but she insisted that it was horrible much to the protests of Marla.
At the thought of Marla, Kiara smiled and signed at the bird to stay where it was (she even said it as clearly as she could as if that would make a difference).
She rushed back the way she came, following her footprints in the snow. When she arrived back at the daytime camp, she kneeled next to where Marla was laying on the ground. She tapped her on the shoulder. Marla opened her eyes.
"Hey," Marla signed. "What's up?"
"Come on, you can sleep later."
"Maybe not." Marla argued, but got up anyway.
The girls drew the attention of Dalisay and Elliot, but the pair quickly went back to drawing the map - which they were making quite a bit of progress on.
Kiara led Marla into the forest, once again following her footprints. "Where are we going?" Marla asked, yawning into her hand, resulting in the message not getting across completely. She repeated it, to which Kiara answered, "It's not far… I just found this thing I wanted to show you."
Soon, the footprints stopped. They had reached the bird. Except… "It���s not here!"
"What's not?"
Kiara sighed. "The bird. It was really cute - did a little dance and everything!"
Marla laughed (either that or she screamed, but, from the look on her face Kiara guessed laughing). "You're adorable."
Kiara blushed, and quickly tucked her loose strands of hair (which had multiplied) behind her ears as an excuse to look away.
Marla moved closer, and tapped her on the shoulder so Kiara could see what she was signing. "Let me redo it," She said, referring to the plait (if you could still call it that). Kiara nodded and turned back around. Marla ran her fingers through her hair to entangle it from the plait. She then started tugging at it gently, pulling it back into the plait tightly.
Once she was done, Marla let her fingers linger a little longer, before moving them away and getting Kiara's attention to tell her she'd finished.
"Thank you," Kiara signed.
"No problem."
The two of them stood there, smiling shyly at each other, until Marla snapped out of it. "We should probably get back. Still need to get some sleep before the sun sets." Kiara agreed, and they began walking back, making sure to 'accidentally' bump into each other slightly as they walked.
When they got back to camp, Dalisay had fallen asleep on Elliot's lap, and he was using her head as a table to draw the map on.
Marla laid back down and closed her eyes, giving Kiara one last smile beforehand. Kiara joined her on the ground, conscious of the small distance between the two of them, and did her best to push this thought from her mind and go to sleep. She was going to need this energy for when they faced the Hunters.