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Let’s get right in to it.  When we left Jali yesterday, the orne was about devour her essence!  Click the link below to check it out.

“Mortal Wounds” Part 1

“Mortal Wounds” Part 2

The orne jerked back with a hiss, then slithered away from her in a bizarre tangle of limbs.  “Cannot feed from you,” he shouted, as though Jali had done something.  “Wasteful, stinking magic inside you.”  He spat, as if to rid himself of a bad taste.

Jali braced her arms behind her, mind racing, discarding the question of what magic he spoke of for another time.  She seized on her last chance at survival.  “Set me free, and I will hunt you again.  If I cannot be good for food, I can be good for amusement.”  Her voice cracked as a fresh wave of pain rolled up her leg, and she shuddered.

The orne cackled.  In another movement that seemed all at once graceful and awkward, it flipped to land beside her.  With the ease of a child lifting a ball, he tossed the boulder aside.

Jali stuffed her fist into her mouth to hold back her rising gorge.  Her ankle was a mangle of blood, bone and flesh.  She could wrap it, and make the journey home.  But the orne would continue to stalk and feed off her village, because he had no reason not to.

The creature stared with fascination at her ruined foot.  “You cannot walk on that.”  It cocked its oddly shaped head at her, so that the point of one horn pressed into the meat of her calf.  “I wonder if my healing magic would work on you.”  His lips twisted and eyes brightened with mirth.  “Would you like me to heal you.”

Jali stiffened.  Dangerous to ask, or even accept help from an orne.  To owe any of the Fair Folk a debt would always demand far too high a price.  Jali swallowed down her fear.  “If you did, it would be for yourself, so I will hunt you again.”  She bit her lip.  Too risky to say she could make it home.  “I am mortal, and accepting of my death.”  Those words might prove equally risky.

The orne laughed out loud and clapped its hands.  “Clever girl.  Oh, so clever.  Yes, I shall heal you and we shall have our chase.”

His horns glowed, and seemed to writhe like a collection of snakes.  He tilted his head again, and the horn point stabbed into Jali’s wounded leg.

She cried out, and watched, heart pounding, as pearly liquid dribbled down the length of the horn.  It flowed over her skin, more like a breath of cool air then liquid.  Jali’s leg burned.  She squeezed her eyes shut against the rising pain until she could no longer bare it.

She opened her eyes with a gasp.  And found her foot and ankle whole and unbroken.  She looked up.

The orne did a standing flip, and landed several yards away in the form of a massive white stag.  With a bellow, he galloped away.

Jali stood.  Though her mind protested the movement, her leg gave no twinge, not even the slightest suggestion she’d been injured.  She snatched up her bow, arrows and pack and gave chase.

As she had before, she pursued the beast.  Often it looked like a stag, but sometimes she glimpsed it as a man-like creature, spindly legs leaping and twisting in utterly inhuman ways.  Never, in all her pursuit, did Jali gain enough to draw her bow.

After some time, she realized with a sinking heart, she was not tracking the creature.  Any moment it occurred to her to look for trail signs of his passage, he would appear, a flash of white through the trees.

Jali stopped running.

There, a flash of antler.  Jali waited, eyes roving the trees.

A glimpse of hoof and tail, to her right.

All a trick.  The orne trailed her along, and would keep doing so until she collapsed from exhaustion.

****

See you all Thursday for part 3.