Interlude SS [10.7] Friends Find Each Other Final

For the first time in what felt like forever, Julie was free. Tears spilled before she could stop them, hot and silent as she collapsed at the base of an old mossy tree. The cold night air kissed her skin in sharp contrast to the heat of adrenaline still coursing through her veins. Red streaked across the torn remains of the white silk dress they’d forced on her, the fabric clinging to her like a mockery. Her arms and legs stung with cuts and bruises, her feet raw from the rough ground, and her breath came in ragged gasps as the forest pulsed around her, both alive and indifferent.

I survived.

She let the tears run their course until her body quieted and her thoughts sharpened. There was no time to mourn or reflect for long. She hadn’t eaten in more than a day. Her legs were shredded from thorns and brambles, and every shift of wind sounded too much like footsteps. The snap of a distant branch made her flinch, heart lurching, but the darkness held—for now. She knew she couldn’t remain still. The gnolls would come for her, and after what she’d done to their client, there would be no recapture. Only death.

Julie knew she had to move, but she also needed to understand what was happening inside her—or rather, what wasn’t. Her magic wasn’t where it used to be. She couldn’t feel her core anymore. It was gone, as though it had been carved from her body. And yet, she could still use magic. Not in the way she’d been trained, but differently. It was less like commanding and more like… negotiating. Communing.

She focused and tried a spell in the traditional mage’s tongue, the words crisp on her tongue, but nothing happened. She said a spell in the language of mages, but nothing happened. She tried again but again nothing happened. She was going to give up but something told her to try something else. She felt silly for doing it but she raised her hand one more time.

“Please… Levitate?” she said though this wasn’t sure why. “What am I doing this isn’t h—”

Her voice died in her throat when a nearby rock lifted gently into the air. She blinked, heart thudding, and tried again. 

“Heat.”

Nothing.

She frowned, and softened her tone. “Please heat?”

The stone began to crack and bubble as it became red hot in moments. It was exactly the spell she wanted to use. But instead of controlling the process she asked and her magic did it on it’s own. The spell was called Make Magma Light. It could produce light and heat that only she could see and feel. It was the geokinetic’s equivalent to the Light spell. 

“My magic is… moody?” she murmured aloud. “Can you understand me?”

There was no response, but she didn’t know what she expected. It was just her magic. How could it talk? 

Wait, how could it talk? It doesn’t have a mouth.

“If you can understand me, move the Magma Light up and down.”

The ball moved as she had instructed, she backed away from the spell. Was it her, that influenced it to happen or did her magic have a mind of its own. She didn’t have time to figure that out. It was an asinine thought and most importantly she had to move.

“We are going to go, we have to escape. Follow me and make sure only I can see you.” Julie said not sure if she was going crazy or if this was real. “And if you are able to understand me somehow. Thanks for killing that guy that was trying to take us.”

The Magma Light bobbed up and down but she didn’t pay it any mind. She started moving this time more carefully. She didn’t want to leave a trail directly to her, and she didn’t want to step on a snake and die like an idiot after escaping. With the Magma Light she didn’t have to worry about the cold air settling in around her as the night stretched on. She just needed to keep going. That was it. Move.

Julie walked until morning, putting one aching foot in front of the other, always in a straight line away from the camp. The forest grew denser with every mile. Branches slapping at her face, brambles tugging at the remains of her dress, roots waiting to trip her if she dared to stop paying attention. She had no map, no sense of direction beyond away, but she trusted her gut and the rising sun to keep her moving in the right direction.

The pain in her feet grew unbearable. Each step sent a jolt through her legs, and the rough ground tore into her soles with no mercy. She tried to ignore it until she couldn’t anymore. Then, half-limping, half-shuffling, she did something that days ago would have made her question her sanity.

She turned to the strange presence of her magic, she found herself turning to floating Magma Light when she needed something to talk to. Or when she made request.

“Can you coat me in stone? Please?” She asked.

The orb pulsed then bobbed up and down. She knew she was going crazy but for some reason seeing the floating orb made her feel like she wasn’t alone.

The spell she asked for was Geokinetic Stone Armor, a common defensive spell used by her kind of mage. Not true stone, but a hardened magical barrier that took on the appearance and resilience of it. Before her eyes, smooth grey plates formed over her arms and legs. Her hands were covered in flexible gauntlets, her shins in bracers, and—most blessed of all shoes, thick-soled and seamless.

For the first time in hours, she wasn’t barefoot in an unknown land, and she nearly cried again for the small mercy. 

Thank every Divine there is! Sól, Nyra and Korma, Véla, Thaen! And all of the others!

She kept moving, pushing forward through the ever-thickening undergrowth until her vision blurred and the tremble in her limbs became impossible to ignore. When the weight of exhaustion finally pinned her in place, she picked a tree, a large one with many roots and pointed at the ground beside it.

“Can you dig me a burrow?” she asked softly, voice frayed and raw. “I want to sleep underground.”

The earth responded at once. The soil parted without a sound, roots easing gently aside as though bowed by unseen hands. Leaves were carefully lifted, set aside to be replaced later, and the hole deepened into a narrow, sheltering space just big enough for her to curl into. It was done with more precision and finesse than she believed possible, especially given her tired, starved state.

She didn’t stop to question it.

She didn’t want to think about what it meant that her magic responded not to formulas, but to requests. That it moved with a purpose she didn’t fully understand. She didn’t want to know, not yet. She was going to sleep in a hole like an animal, but that didn’t feel worse than what she had already endured. She had slept in cages like a dog. She had been washed like livestock, dressed for sale like a cut of meat.

As she crawled into the burrow, she reached up and touched the cold iron collar still locked around her neck. Its chill was a reminder that even now, even after escape, she wasn’t free. Not entirely. Not yet.

The entrance sealed gently behind her, a thin gap left for air. The leaves above rustled back into place, hiding all trace of her presence.

Curled in the dark, safe for the moment, she whispered into the silence, “Mat… Thesis… you both better be alive.”

Then, without another word, she let sleep take her.

***

It was the second day of travel, and night was approaching. Something was off, something was following her. She hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard more than the occasional rustle or too-swift shadow flitting between the trees, but the feeling clawed up her spine all the same. 

That terrible sense of being watched, hunted. Every breath came faster. Her pulse beat against her ribs like war drums, loud enough she feared whatever was out there could hear it too. The hairs on her arms stood on end, her limbs tense and ready to bolt.

She was not going to be killed like this, not after she had gotten so far. Then came a sound. A sharp crunch of underbrush not far behind, too loud, too deliberate and far too close. She didn’t know if it were gnoll or some type of predator but she wouldn’t turn around to find out.

She tore off through the forest, legs burning as she sprinted between trees and over uneven ground. Branches slapped her face and caught in her hair until the stone armor crawled up her neck and shielded every part of her. She barely saw the root before it snagged her foot and flung her forward. Her body hit the earth hard, knocking the wind from her lungs. There wasn’t any pain not in her arcane armor. The fear gnawed at her as she scrambled to her feet, gasping the taste of bile, and kept running.

Behind her, the sounds grew clearer. Heavy, steady footfalls, not clumsy like a charging beast, but precise. It wasn’t human, and it was gaining.

She threw herself into a gully, jagged stone’s tested her defences, she clawed her way up the far side with every ounce of strength. She couldn’t help but notice that the stone started to form hand and foot holds for. Her magic aiding her every way it could without her having to ask. Her whole body shook with effort and panic, heart thundering like it was trying to escape her chest. Then, with no warning at all, the forest ended. The trees opened into nothing.

She skidded to a halt, dirt and pine needles spraying beneath her heels as she caught herself at the very edge of a cliff. The rock beneath her gave way. She pitched forward into empty air, a scream ripping from her throat before she could stop herself, but she didn’t fall.

A powerful arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back just in time. She thrashed wildly, kicking, elbowing, screaming hoarsely, but the grip didn’t tighten in punishment. It didn’t hurt. Still, she twisted until she could see who had caught her.

It wasn’t a gnoll.

It wasn’t a man.

It was a monster.

The creature that held her stood tall and still, with green eyes that glowed like moonlight and fur streaked with battle-scars. Her frame was lean but powerful, and her muzzle was longer than any gnoll’s Julie had ever seen. There was no mistaking the truth, this was a wifwolf, one of the feared female werewolves, just as deadly as their male counterparts. 

The wifwolf didn’t strike her or show any aggression, something didn’t add up. Her grip, while firm, wasn’t cruel. Her claws rested against Julie’s side, not digging in. There was no hunger or violence in her eyes only watchfulness as she pulled her away from the ledge.

“Let me go or I swear I’ll jump,” Julie hissed, her voice trembling with fear but fierce all the same.

Julie was already reading herself for a fight. A stone spear or something that could run the wifwolf through if she tried to kill her. It likely wouldn’t work as the wifwolf looked alerted as the magic began to form behind her. Of course a warrior could feel the magic as a spell formed. 

The wolf-creature tilted her head, curious, and then stepped back. Her body shimmered. Her fur receded. Bone shifted, joints snapping and reforming as limbs twisted into a smaller, more humanoid shape. The transformation happened without flourish or dramatics, just efficient, practiced motion. In seconds, a woman stood where the beast had been.

She was barefoot at the cliff’s edge, her armor still fit for a creature twice her current size—bone plates, heavy furs, thick leather worn from use and caked with forest grime. Her skin was pale and marked with battle tattoos as victory runes etched in black and red. One side of her head was shaved, while the other side held a long braid that brushed past her shoulder. Her ears remained pointed and twitching, not entirely human.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said, her voice a low, steady thing that carried no threat. “Name’s Adelheid Strider. I’m with the pack that attacked those slavers bastards. I was told by some of the women we freed from the dead guy with the spike through his head you ran. Good job on that by the way did they not know you were a mage?”

Julie couldn’t answer. She just stood there breathless, staring at the woman in front of her as her thoughts chased themselves in circles.

“I’m real.” Adelheid said softly. “You’re safe. You are free.”

Julie’s knees buckled as something inside her cracked wide open. She collapsed onto the cold ground, and the sobs tore out of her like they had been building for days. She curled forward, gasping for air, the grief too big for her chest. 

She didn’t know if she was being foolish but for some reason she believed this woman that she was actually here to save her. She wanted to believe, she wanted this nightmare to end. The stone armor began to fall apart into glittering sparkles of arcane power as the spell was dismissed.

“I thought I was gonna die,” she managed between chokes. “I thought—I thought I was already dead—”

Adelheid knelt beside her and said nothing for a moment. Then, gently, she unfastened the thick fur cloak she wore and wrapped it around Julie’s shivering form. There was no lecture. No reassurances forced too early. Just warmth and silence.

“You didn’t die,” she said finally, voice steady as stone. “You lived.”

Julie clutched at her, hands shaking, and repeated the words like a mantra, her voice small and broken. “I lived. I lived.”

Adelheid nodded once. “Damn right you did. And I’m going to make sure you stay that way.”

She looked back into the forest, her eyes sharpening and her nostrils flaring as she took in the scents around them. There was something primal in her stance again, something that spoke of violence waiting just beneath the surface.

“Come on. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

Julie didn’t argue. She let herself be pulled to her feet, swaying under the weight of exhaustion. Adelheid took most of that weight without a word, guiding her carefully through the forest’s edge. She walked like a predator, silent and poised, but held Julie like something breakable, like something worth saving.

And for the first time in weeks, Julie began to believe that maybe, she would be okay.