Home
I am an aspiring author with a focus on fantasy, romance and magical realism. I also dabble in watercolour art and photography.
If you’d like to learn more about my current projects, you can follow the link HERE! And for an excerpt from my WIP Faehunter, continue below!
The Attack
Blood looked so garish. Bright as a berry, too red to be real.
Three of the village hounds lay dead in the road, bitten to pieces. Nothing died in the otherworld, but here death roved like pike and struck whom it pleased. Lai sang for her sword as the gauntwolf jerked towards her, flanks heaving. Foam bubbled at the edges of its mouth. It knew her on sight as a faething, a wild hunter, and gathered itself to attack.
She was faster, and slammed into it as hard as she could. The impact carried them both into the wall of the nearest cottage. Screams rose from inside. Alise and her children, trapped within. They left her milk and honey every third evening and that obligation twisted around her now like iron, binding her to their defense.
The beast whirled towards the sound and threw itself against the door, ignoring her even as she stabbed it again and again. The flesh felt wrong. Like biting into rotten fruit, the skin bursting and the insides entirely soft. Alise’s tabby-cat leaped into the breach with a scream, slicing the gaunts’ snout open, and barely escaped the snapping jaws.
Why don’t you listen!? Why won’t you bargain, why?
Just like the bandits. They wouldn’t listen to her either. Why, why? Was Vier right, was she really so monstrous-
You.
Twisting, it gripped her sword in it’s teeth and heaved. And she was no fighter, to know when to release her weapon. The gauntwolf tossed her half the length of the street and she landed in an undignified sprawl against Thom’s cottage, head spinning.
Hate.
A voice in her head. And the sense of recognition, as if a stranger had turned to her with the face of a friend.
No. Not a friend. An enemy.
I knew them in the otherworld.
The gaunt yelped. She looked up as a small, dark shape blurred past her. Vier. The wardring hummed as she swung it like a flail, striking the gaunt on the snout. It recoiled with a scream, a dozen garbled voices rising from a putrid throat.
Vier harried the beast back and Lai saw the difference in their approaches as she pushed herself up.
Much as she didn’t have Vier’s knowledge, Vier didn’t have her brute strength. She had to fight clever, guarding herself with the ring and jabbing forwards with her sword whenever she saw an opening. She looked as if she were dancing, every movement measured as she slowly turned the gaunt away from the village.
And Lai saw all at once how dangerous Vier’s life was. A mortal walking the world alone, using skill to protect themselves and others from magic. She remembered how she had jeered at the beasthunter and her stubborn ways and her cautious manner, and knew the cutting edge of shame. Of course Vier was quiet and dark and grim as a winter night with no moon. She lived a dangerous life, and walked dangerous roads alone.
Not alone. Not anymore.
Lai picked herself up and charged, and her battlesong was like honey in her mouth.