Chapter 1 - End of a normal day
Gaze walked through the jungle lost in thought, staring at the small object in her hand as she made her way easily through the thick jungle. Her green cloak and the clothes underneath it were covered in mud as if she had been dragged across the jungle floor, or rather had crawled across it, and her bow sat in her quiver of arrows with a snapped bowstring. The hood of her cloak was up as she stepped onto a beaten dirt path, and with each step she walked into the fading daylight as the trees gave way to the sunset sky over Lydia Village.
She put away her hand as she passed the small fields on this side of the village, looking around to see a team of dwarves working on a plot of hemp before the sunlight fully left them. They all looked up as she passed but most of the men and women ignored her just as quickly, but some of them stared at her as she passed, their eyes revealing their barely hidden distrust and scorn. She pretended not to notice, even if it did bother her. The other villagers she passed on the path gave her a wide berth with a similar look of disapproval, and Gaze clicked her tongue in distaste as she took down her hood. The sunlight fell on her short, dark brown hair as it flowed out of the hood, and it lit up her caramel skin, amber colored eyes and full lips. Her face was attractive by human, especially hominid, standards, except for the deep two inch scar on the left side of her face on the edge of her mouth.
Gaze hated that scar. Whenever her mouth moved the scar would up slightly on her face, giving the impression that the tip of the scar was touching her nose. She always felt that whenever someone looked her in the face, all they saw was that scar, and she hated how it felt like her most distinct feature. She would rather have had large, annoying breasts for people to look at instead, but at best her chest was average, so people had to look at her scar. Gaze continued walking into the village and and returned to her thoughts, a troubled look coming to her face before she turned when the path bent to the left. She stopped suddenly when she saw someone sitting in the street.
The sun, which was probably just an hour away from sunset as it hung in the sky behind her, cast her shadow in front of her so that it ended just shy of a small boy who sat on the ground with his face between his knees, crying next to a broken wooden doll. Gaze sighed and looked around to see that no one was around on this side of the village, and then continued walking until she stood over him. She looked down and saw that the boy was the John the baker’s son, a hominid just like herself. The boy was the spitting image of his father, with black, curly hair and very dark skin, though he was probably only seven years old. Gaze cleared her throat as she knelt down next to him; “Hey Charlie,” she said, her voice sweet and kind, “You alright?”
The boy looked up at her with tears in his eyes, looking at Gaze in the face without saying a word. She pushed down the thought that he was staring at her scar. “What’s wrong, did you break your toy?” The boy didn’t respond. “Not the talkative today, huh? That’s alright” Gaze said as she reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out a trinket; a little rabbit’s foot on a leather string. She dangled it in front of the boy’s eyes.
“Look you don’t gotta say anything, but you should head home now, alright? Come on, take this and go, I’m sure your mom is worried about you.” At first the boy simply stared at it, so she took his hand in her own and dropped the rabbit’s foot into his palm, closing his fist around it. The boy’s face lit up with a smile. He stood up quickly and Gaze watched the boy run down the street with the rabbit foot in hand. She smiled to herself as stood up and continued walking down the path to her home.
Half an hour later she walked through the double doors of The Alehouse, the only bar in the village and a place she rarely visited despite her love for it. It was empty at this time of day as mostly everyone was still working, though she counted three persons already inside. Gaze walked in and passed between the two long tables at the center of the room, laid almost end to end with enough space between them for a thick shouldered dwarve to squeeze through, and walked up to the bar. The bartender stood behind the bar cleaning out clay flasks, and another Dwarve was sitting at the counter, one she recognized by his fuzzy brown hair he had tied back into a fuzzy ponytail, and the bronze breastplate he wore over his black gambeson to prove his authority as one of the village’s peace enforcer.
“Bartender, three pints of bitter broque please.” Gaze said, taking an open seat at the bar. “Put it on Eva’s tab.” The bartender nodded to Gaze and turned to retrieve the order.
The dwarve scoffed through his thick, brown beard, turning to her just as she reached the bar counter. “Now who said that I would pay for your drinks, leaflet? What, was hunting in the deerwood to difficult to make one silver dollar this week?”
“Last time I checked, stonefoot, you still owed me for saving you-know-what, so buy me my drink and shut it!” Gaze said lightheartedly, patting him on the shoulder as she sat on the bar stool.
Eva scoffed again and turned back to his drink. “Even so, I’m not paying for your drinks, ya damn leaflet.” he grumbled.
Eva sighed as she pulled her purse from her hip and counted from it ten round, smooth discs made of copper, dropping them on the bar as the bartender came back around.
“Let’s just make it two pints today then.” She frowned.
The bartender returned and placed a clay mug in front of the hunter as Gaze removed her cloak, taking the mug in one hand with a thankful smile and knocking back a mouthful of it. The strong bitterness cut through the stale taste of trail rations in her mouth after the last seven days spent eating it, and the crisp taste of the drink filled her with a feeling of comfort, telling her body that she was back in civilization and could relax for the night. Gaze drank another mouthful before coming back down for air, folding her arms on top of the counter and resting her head upon them to relax. She jumped back to the present when Eva spoke up again.
“What?” She asked.
“I’m asking about your hunt today, did you catch anything worth butchering?”
Gaze sighed and lowered her head again. “I don’t know why Eva, but it seems like something is wrong in the deer wood. I wasn’t gonna say anything if you didn’t ask, but late it seems as some monsters been killing all the game in the woods.”
“You sure you haven’t just lost your edge child? It happens more often than you think.”
“No this is different. I’ve had bad tendays where the best I could catch were stupid birds and snakes, but Eva,” she turns her body towards the older man, looking him in the eyes with sincere concern, “I’ve not seen a single deer in the last seven days. That’s not normal, man, it’s almost as if some monster found its way into the Deerwood and is just killing all the large game in sight.”
“Hmph,” Eva said, grabbing his clay mug with his large dwarven hand and emptying the pint into his mouth. “sounds like we’ll need to organise a hunting party to go find out if something is killing all the deer. Ah, if only cutthroat was here. Your master would have probably found and killed whatever it was that was giving you trouble.”
The scar on Gaze’s face twitched again, touching her nose for half a second before going back down. Eva didn’t seem to have seen or cared as he called for another drink.
“And there’s something else I noticed in the forest,” Gaze sighed, picking up her head and reaching into her purse, searching for something in her purse before pulling out a clenched fist. “While i was crawling through the brush, I found something that master Cutthroat always said to look out for.” She said, turning out her hand on the bar counter. The small item bounced once before settling on the counter, a pair of fangs broken off at the root and stuck together end to end. “It’s a talisman, Eva. A goblin talisman.”
