It didn’t matter which Clan you were born to- if you were born to the Clans of the Redstone, you were a hunter. You knew how to stalk your prey, to move quickly, quietly, to come up with strategies on the fly.
Hunting the Totem animals required a certain degree of precision. Each type required a degree of skill. For the Dragons, who ate the hearts and drank the blood of the whelplings and dragonlings that roamed the Redstone, it was important to kill them in a way so that very little blood was wasted.
As a child, the simplest and most effective strategy for whelplings was to toss a net on the ground, wait for a whelpling to get tangled up in it, brain it with a rock, then cut off the head and drink the blood from the neck-stump.
In the end, it was Sheilah that came up with the idea on how to deal with the giants and their city.
She led the group of Clansmen into the city as night was falling, slipping between carved stone walls and into the town proper. The city wasn’t that big, roughly the size of an individual Clan, several hundred of the giants or so.
Wherever the giants had come from, they posed a threat to the Valley, so it was important to defeat them quickly, and if they couldn’t do that, demoralize them so that they had to move on.
Since this was a question of survival and the necessity of triumph, they targeted the women and girl children. Without women, they couldn’t reproduce. They’d have to leave and go back to wherever it was that they came from to find new women.
The Glass Spiders in the group trapped the men in webs, the Horned Serpents used their poisoned knives where they couldn’t finish the women off in one blow, the Manticores flung paralytic spines from who-knew-where, and swords and knives were used to quickly dispatch them.
The group of Clan Children then ventured through the furthest passes of the north into the true Ashlands, where the sky burned and the whole land was poison and death.
“Well Sheilah, where should we go to find ourselves a dragon?” Fialla asked curiously, as the other Clan children scattered to find their own hunting grounds.
“We follow the edge of the cliffs that way.” Sheilah replied, pointing west. “The footing looks good, and I think we’ll have a good vantage to see the entire Burning Wastes. We can make our plans there.” She replied simply.
Fialla nodded. “You Dragons and your love of high places.” She mocked.
“Try telling that to the Thunderbirds and see how well you do.” Sheilah grouched. The Thunderbirds were nominally part of the Clans, but were extremely secretive and didn’t communicate often with the rest of the Clans, except for the Dragons. Even then there was animosity, neither of them could stand the other.
“I think that I’ll avoid them if at all possible.” Fialla replied with a grimace.
“You’re lucky. I do have to deal with them.” Sheilah countered. “You don’t want to. Now, let’s get going. I think there’s a ledge we can get to.”
The trip along the cliffs was difficult and perilous, a struggle to find hand and footholds in the bleak stone.
One advantage they had was their nails, which were harder than steel and could pierce the stone. They never questioned why this was so; it was something they simply understood as part of their bodies, like breathing. They climbed carefully, testing each foothold, gripping each handhold, minding their center of gravity.
Climbing was second nature to the Dragon Clan. They really did like high places, and there were many places to climb in the Redstone.
They spidered up the cliff and along it, their nails sometimes digging furrows in the stone.
They found a place where they could rest, a short lip of stone barely wide enough to accommodate them sitting on it, and eyed the lands they were expected to locate a dragon in.
Far off in the distance, there was a massive spire that thrust itself through the clouds that streamed lava down its flanks. From Sheilah’s dreams, that was where the Great Mother Tyrant lived, somewhere above the clouds, above everything, where she glared down at the world from her molten nest and judged all who dared subvert her overwhelming supremacy over everything.
There were none who could challenge her. There was very little air to breathe up there, and even if they could, the rivers of molten lava would destroy them. Even if they didn’t, the Tyrant lived in the heart of a caldera of liquid rock. It was impossible to defy her.
Below them, perched on the cliff, munching on baked roots and sipping water, were a number of canyons and smoking mountains, lumpy piles of stone that were obviously left from previous eruptions.
“There?” Sheilah asked, pointing to a squat chunk of rock that bubbled with steam. Every so often, a geyser would erupt from the summit, shooting hot jets of steam and water into the air.
“Might be worth checking out.” Fialla replied. “I don’t know if it’s drinkable.”
“Do you not have the heart of a dragon beating in your breast?” Sheilah growled, and Fialla giggled.
“I still have water from the city of the giants. I’m okay for now.” She replied, and then pointed to a crumbling valley, shrouded in low-hanging clouds.
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“I think that’s a good place to start.” Fialla decided.
“Why there?” Sheilah asked.
“I think I saw a dragon’s wingbeat in the clouds. See how they’re swirling now?” Fialla asked, and then began peering down the edge of the cliff to see if she could spot a way down.
“If there’s one, there may be more.” Sheilah replied. “Let’s head down there.”
Heading down was more difficult than heading up, each move threatening to send them sliding down the sheer cliffside.
“I wish we’d brought some rope.” Sheilah cursed, to Fialla’s delighted laughter.
“Dragons go up, they do not go down.” She called, scampering down lightly.
Sheilah silently cursed the dextrous half-elf’s nimbleness, and struggled to keep up.
There were no edible plants in the Ashlands. There were tufts of grass here and there, but they were rank and bitter, with a pungent odor that dug into the sinuses. The floor of the Ashlands was a nest of piles of stone, valley walls, upthrusts of volcanic rock, magma pools, volcanic vents that pumped jets of thick smoke into the air, obscuring everything.
“Fialla, do you know where we are?” Sheilah cried, waving her hands in front of her face for a hint of visibility.
There was no response from her ever-present shadow. Sheilah unslung her bow, inspected the sinew that functioned as her bowstring, and nocked an arrow while blinking back tears from the foul smoke.
She stumbled backwards, squatting down to get under the fog of rancid smoke.
She could see better, but the smell was atrocious. She fished a scrap of cloth from her backpack and wrapped it around her face, then waddled down into a pile of boulders and curled up in a ball while she struggled to breathe.
She had no idea how long she was there, how long she’d dozed, but she suddenly snapped awake, every muscle in her body aching.
Where was she?
The Ashlands.
She struggled to a seated position, and then, using her fingernail, carved in the stone her family’s sigil. She’d been there.
In reflection, she should have done it when they were up on the cliffside, though it hardly mattered now.
She nibbled some of her rations and took a sip of water, and crawled out of her little niche. The ground went steadily downward from here, unless she wanted to climb up the edge of the canyon on the northern side.
It wasn’t too much of a climb at this point, more like a scramble, so she did so, making sure to stay as far away from those jets of smoke as possible.
No matter where she went, Fialla was always by her side. Sometimes annoying, sometimes teasing, sometimes uncomfortably affectionate, but always there. Fialla was a part of her, the same way that her arm was. She’d never been separated from Fialla in this way before. This was dangerous territory; it would be nice to have the girl by her side.
She walked along the edge of the cliff, occasionally stopping to carve her sigil into the boulders as she passed. It’d help her find her way out, and if she died on her hunt, it’d help those who came in search for her family weapons.
A feeling she couldn’t put a name to began gnawing at her innards. It sank rusty barbs into her guts, wrapped an icy claw around her heart, and made tears well in her eyes.
The boulders disappeared until there were only small stones, the stones disappeared into gravel, and suddenly she realized she was on the edge of a smoke-covered chasm.
“Shit.” She muttered, and then glanced up. There was a small lip above her; if she had any strength left in her she should be able to jump up there.
She shouldered her bow, tucked her arrow back in her quiver, and made her awkward leap, catching the edge of the stone with her fingers alone. She scrambled with her feet, but there was no footing. If she fell, it would be right into the smoky chasm, a chasm she wasn’t sure had a bottom.
Suddenly, Fialla appeared on the lip of stone she was dangling from and grabbed Sheilah’s wrist.
All the strength went out of Sheilah as she sagged with relief; Fialla hadn’t disappeared.
“I can’t pull you up by myself. Climb up, girl.” Fialla groaned.
Sheilah reached with her other hand and caught the lip, scrambling with her feet, grabbing a stronger handhold, and hauling herself up.
She plopped herself next to the other girl and embraced the half-elven girl, pulling her tight.
“Don’t ever disappear on me like that again.” She complained, squeezing her tightly.
Fialla returned Sheilah’s embrace. “I thought you’d disappeared on me.” She accused.
Sheilah explained what she’d gone through; causing the other girl’s eyes to widen.
“You got a nap? I’m jealous. Do you have any idea how exhausted I am?” Fialla complained.
Sheilah looked around; what she thought was a tiny ledge was in fact larger than that, so she scooted back, and planted her back against the stone of the canyon, settling her bow to the side. She grabbed Fialla and pulled her close so that the smaller girl was straddling her.
“There. Now you can sleep comfortably.” She offered, and Fialla melted into the taller girl’s embrace. She was asleep in seconds.
“A woman cannot take another woman as a bride, you know.” Fialla mumbled into Sheilah’s chest a couple of hours later as she woke up.
“Where did that come from?” Sheilah asked.
Fialla lifted her head. “Months ago, at the pools. You asked me if you needed to give me an iron knife.”
“There are some that... think we’re too close.” Sheilah replied. “I think it''s natural to reach that idea when your friend starts kissing you with so much passion.”
“I was glad you’d returned to your senses. You’re my friend. My best friend.” She paused. “My only friend.”
Shielah simply allowed the girl to talk.
“You know your mothers, Ladria and Mayrin? They were so close that they would not let a man come between them. It was something of an arrangement; if Ladria found someone to be with, someone she was willing to spend the rest of her life with, Mayrin would follow. The circumstances are different with us, I know. Ladria was the Princess of the Wild Elves and Mayrin was her ... right hand? Her Maiden of Honor? I guess that’s the Clan equivalent.” She looked up at Sheilah. “That’s the kind of relationship I want with you. I want you to know me, to trust me, to love me as a sister, and in turn I will do the same for you. When you marry, I want to be beside you.”