5: Huntress

The new day brimmed with promise and peril.

The dawn sun painted the proud clouds with strokes of peachy orange and lilac violet, and the air was sharp with an early spring chill. As she stepped out into the courtyard, Leiyn reveled in each breath, the crispness awakening her senses and focusing her mind.

The Wilds Lodge and its company held its joys and comforts, but the wilderness was where she belonged.

Her departure was well attended. Isla and Tadeo had come to see her off, though it was hardly an occasion to merit a farewell. The patrol was an ordinary circuit through the Tortoise Bluffs and would take five days at most.

But in the Titan Wilds, where the very land itself rebelled against the colonists, any reconnoiter might be a ranger's last.

"Pay Elisa a visit while you're out, will you?" her friend teased. "I'm sure she's missed you these past two years, and spirits know you could use the warm bed."

Leiyn rolled her eyes and mounted Steadfast, who stood as firm as his name as she settled atop his back.

"I'll stick to my route, thanks," she replied. "Folly's lasses will have to mourn my absence."

As Isla gave her a last droll smile and wave, Leiyn turned to Tadeo. He approached Steadfast slowly, though the horse wasn't one to startle, and ran a hand down his sable mane. The lodgemaster held Leiyn's gaze. 

"Remember," he murmured. "Remember your oath."

He said the same thing to her every time before she left on patrol. And though the words remained constant, the meaning was ever-shifting. 

"Perceive, preserve, protect," Leiyn answered. "I remember. I always do."

Tadeo nodded, but added as she turned away, "And Leiyn, don't be rash."

She looked back with an arched eyebrow. "Getting sentimental in your twilight years, old man?"

The lodgemaster only smiled tolerantly and stepped away. Leiyn allowed him another fleeting grin before she turned to the forest.

"Alright, old boy. You can have your head for a minute."

The stallion had never made a sound louder than a snort, and he didn't begin then as she pressed her heels into his flanks. Yet he was as eager as a colt as he burst forward at a gallop, carrying them down into the forest and away from the Lodge.

Leiyn always intended to follow her old mentor's advice, but as usual, she cast it aside. She and Steadfast rode forth with wild abandon, grinning into the wind. At length, when the horse began to pant and the forest became denser, they slowed. 

She found a quiet peace in their surroundings. The natural sounds of the wilderness—chirping birds, buzzing insects, rustling branches—layered like fallen leaves in autumn, each as much a part of the woods as the trees themselves. The air was redolent with the perfume of spring. Leiyn relaxed into the saddle. Though she enjoyed the company of her fellow rangers, nothing settled her like a trot through the Titan Wilds.

This was her home. Only while traveling through the wilderness did Leiyn feel complete—as much as she ever did.

The patrol continued, and as the opportunity arose, she indulged in her usual hobby. Various plants and animals in the Titan Wilds were unknown to the Ancestral Land naturalists and their journals. Leiyn had never been a practiced hand at either drawing or writing, having come to an education late in life, but her impediments had only made her strive all the harder to master the skills. With her hidebound logbook and graphite pen ever in her saddlebags, she kept watch for the next novelty to sketch.

Already, she'd filled pages upon pages with the Titan Wilds' strange occupants. One flower, everscent, changed its aroma with the seasons, and sometimes over the span of a few moments. With her nose buried in its petals, she had smelled first honey mixed with overripe peaches, then it had turned woody and gathered the cool savor of pine. Leiyn wasn't prone to picking flowers, having never been fond of adorning herself like a festival wreath, but she made an exception for everscent blossoms. 

Not all her findings were innocuous. While resting under a gnarled oak, she'd narrowly avoided strangulation from an aggrieved tangle of red-veined vines. Hangman's ivy, she'd termed it, and was fascinated by the discovery—once she'd retreated a safe distance, at least. 

Beasts, too, could often be bizarre and vastly different from those found in the Ancestral Lands. She'd seen deer with fangs like wolves that hadn't startled at her passage but watched like a pack prowling for their next meal. She hadn't lingered to see if they were as aggressive as their stances promised and only sketched them from memory. Such was also the case for tusked jackals and thorned lions, as well as other predators prowling the forested hills.

Still odder things existed. Leiyn had seen rocks, similar to those surrounding them, scuttle like crabs for a short distance before settling, never to shift again. And ordinary aspens and pines had rustled without the aid of wind.

In the Titan Wilds, the land itself was alive. And nothing showed that more than titans.

Leiyn kept her eyes open for more of the oddities that populated this range she called her own, this strange place on the edge of the world. And for a time, she was content.

A harsh cry echoed through the forest.

It wasn't a sound she'd often heard, yet it was distinctive enough to be instantly recognizable. It resembled an eagle's scream, but deeper and cruelly edged. The cry belonged to a beast much larger than a bird, a creature that was foreign even to these wild lands.

It was a draconion's call. And draconions never traveled without their masters.

Gasts.

She felt the change stirring in her. A familiar fury burned through her limbs, hot and cold at once. The tranquility of the patrol evaporated, and the woman who had been content to wander the woods shriveled into a small corner in the back of her mind. 

Leiyn became the huntress once more.

It was a part of her born of memories of loss and violence and barely healed wounds. Gone were the soft feelings that wouldn't serve survival. Gone were serenity and idle curiosity. What use were sketches when devils were out for blood—for her blood and the blood of those she'd sworn to protect?

What place did joy have in a world shared with Gasts?

It didn't matter that this huntress was a facet of herself she'd never liked. A part she feared. A part she hated.

But her rage cut both ways. It was a weapon, and it made a weapon of her. 

She could no more resist it than a titan's awakening.

Leiyn clenched her jaw and tugged the reins in the direction the sound had come from. Steadfast resisted for a moment, preferring the even path ahead of him, but as usual he complied.

"Stay alert, old boy," she murmured to the stallion. "Be ready."

She struggled to follow her own advice, for her mind wandered into bloody fantasies. She would repay them for every wound they'd inflicted upon Baltesia. On the Lodge. On her family. 

They would pay, no matter the cost.

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