Childhood's End

“Are you ready for this, uh… miss?” whispered the late thirty-something year old very tall, very thin human man dressed in stealthy blacks.  

“I already told you, my name is Kathrri,” Kathrricallia, a dark-haired elf maybe half his age, whispered back. She made sure to properly roll the double r-sound near the end of what most might consider her first name. Hers was a proud, resourceful name derived partially from Drudic of the fey wilds and from that of her large, widespread family. She had only met the man, Edgeer, a handful of minutes before and he’d already forgotten it… This latest night time raid was starting out just great. 

“Shh. Another guard. Everyone ‘gainst the wall again!” That young half-elven woman outfitted for stealth like her two companions was Stel. Kathrri had know her ever since they’d played during their childhood together a good ten years or more ago. The fiery red-haired Stel had volunteered for this dangerous mission even though she, unlike the other two, still called a house inside the walls of Aireden, the town they were about to slip back into, her home. For a long moment the three of them pressed up into deep the shadows casts by the damp, chilly stone wall as a guard holding a torch walked across the ramparts overhead. “Ok… he’s clear,” Stel whispered a minute later. “It’s now or never… can you do it Kathrri?” 

Kathrri nodded then reached first into one small pouch strapped to her hip, and then another. Burnt mistletoe and a sprig of spruce. She clasped her hands and rubbed the two components together as she said a small, quiet prayer. After a moment she, and the two others with her, each gave the tiniest of starts when something around them almost imperceptibly changed. There was still the sounds of the wind, of distant bird calls, of closer nighttime bugs, but when Kathrri clasped her hands together a second time they made no sound at all. That same silence was true for the usual quiet rustle of her form-fitting, dark colored, hooded leather armor and even her cautious, experimental footfalls. The others were under the effects, as well. Not only was her spell dampening their sounds, it was doing something similar for their visibility and hers. It was like an odd camouflage or trick of the light powerful enough to make them hard to spot at a distance even if they’d been standing in full daylight. 

A light grip and tug on her shoulder from Edgeer—speech and visual cues were much less effective now that the spell had been cast— signaled it was time to move. The three of them were free to walk a little faster and a little less cautiously, now, than they had when they were making their way from the woods, through the ever expanding clear-cut zone that boarded the city, and to the town wall an hour earlier. They rounded a bend in the wall then stopped near what looked to be a solid, heavy metal grate maybe three feet by three feet wide set almost five feet above the ground. Edgeer had to reach up to get his hand on it and then ever so carefully rock the center section of it back and forth until almost the whole thing popped seamlessly free. With a little more work, all three of them pulled themselves up and squeezed through the tight opening before returning the compromised grate to its previous, seemingly intact position. 

They were inside the upper floor of a small, unlit storehouse, now. There was nothing around but a lot of cobwebs and a few dusty boxes. It was Kathrri turn to lead the way. She slowly led the way downstairs and out onto the dimly lit cobblestone streets, careful to check for anyone they might run into each step of the way. Although she’d grown up in the nearby wild expanse of the fey woods, Kathrri had explored the city streets with Stel and a few others so often back when they were kids that she knew her way around just as well here as she did in her own home section of the forest. 

After a few uninterrupted minutes of travel slipping past more warehouses and the occasional storefront Kathrri froze and gently pushed back on Stel, the next in line. With quiet gestures and touches the three quickly pressed themselves into the a dark nook once more as a patrolling guard came marching by. His torch sent long shadows stretching every which way as he neared and then passed by. If not for their dark outfits, and Kathrri’s concealing spell, the three would have almost surely have been spotted. The small gang of three began moving again once the guard turned a corner and his torchlight faded from view. Down two blocks. Left. Then right and squeeze through a tight alley. Cross the street and circle around left… and then they were there. At one of Aireden’s smallest armories. 

The town’s primary armory was a well-lit and well-guarded affair, but this structure was closer to a brick-built warehouse half-filled with old weapons and armor used to train new city guardsmen than it was a proper armory. There really was no other use for the worn out gear…  unless you were a bunch of forest dwellers on the verge of losing your homes to the steady, murderous advance of progress and had no blacksmithing capability to speak of. Kathrri and her two companions were here to steal those weapons, as many as they could. With things headed in the direction they were, several dozens live might soon depend on their success this night. 

Kathrri moved to the armory’s rear door only to find it padlocked. She moved back and gave a light touch to Edgeer. He was, supposedly, the best lock picker in the city’s small but thriving thieve’s guild. Now was his time to prove it. Kathrri had to huff and pout at just how little time it took the man to swing the newly unlocked door open. She’d been practicing on locks of all shapes and sizes for a couple years now, but there was no way she could have disabled that padlock so quickly. Edgeer returned to her side and his touch meant it was her time to lead again. He may have had more practiced nimble hands, but her senses were still a good bit better. She slipped into the armory and was instantly aware that they were not alone. Flickering lamp light and a distant, unguarded conversation were both coming from around a corner and down the hallway connecting the rear of the armory to the front. There were probably guards stationed in the armory’s front foyer. But that meant that the rows and rows of weapons back here were theirs for the taking. 

Normally, a team of three consisting of a tall thin man and two even leaner young women could hardly hope to sneak off with much armament at all. A few swords and maybe three crossbows each if they filled both hands and arranged the rest just right. But that was the beauty of the plan Kathrri had come up with. She’d be able to easily carry ten times that amount, and making her way out would be far easier for her than it had been sneaking her way in.

It felt almost comical to Kathrri just how many crossbows and quivers full of crossbow bolts her companions were able to drape across her body even as she worked to clip a dozen swords in their scabbards to her waist and belt. By the time they were finished, she was so weighed down by her new myriad arsenal of arms she could barely move. Being stealthy like this was completely out of the question! And yet, she still had a big smug grin on her face.

At least until it happened. 

Neither Kathrri nor her companions had noticed that the conversations coming from the front of the armory had stopped until an imposing, green-skinned guard holding a lantern stepped around the corner. He had them dead to rights, and not even Kathrri’s concealing spell could hide them from his direct view. 

“Jellay! Get back here! We’re being robbed!” the guard yelled even as he lunged for Kathrri. As tangled up and bogged down as she was with weapons, there was really no chance of her getting away. She’d barely made it a couple of steps before the guard’s strong hand caught her thin wrist then wrenched her right arm around and pinned it painfully to her back. 

“Go! Run!” Kathrri yelled even as she was being pulled sideways pressed into a nearby wall. Edgeer was gone in an instant, professional thief that he was. But Kathrri could just see Stel hesitating in the doorway out of the corner of her eye. And the second guard was coming fast! “I’ll catch up!” Kathrri promised.  

With that, much to Kathrri’s relief, Stel ran, too. 

“I’ve got this one, you get the other!” the guard crushing Kathrri to the wall said. Did he not see how many there were? The other guard ran out the back seemingly to give chance, and then all was quiet once more. And yet… something about the way her guard said those words was rattling around in Kathrri’s head. 

She found herself roughly treated once again as the guard gripped both her shoulders tightly then spun her to face him. “Don’t move, don’t struggle!” The man… no, young man… no, his face was green, which would make him a half-orc. One very near her own age. And then the realization that had been working its way through her skull struck her at the same moment a similar insight struck him.

“Genki?!”“Kathrri?!”

The two had called out each other’s name in the exact same instant. There, standing in front of Kathrri, holding her painfully in place, was the now grown up half-orc named ‘Genki’ who had once, long ago, been her very best friend!

Like with Stel, she had first met Genki years and years ago when they were just children. One day he’d come crying from inside the city walls, a half-orc who’d caught more than his fair share of scorn for the mixed blood and angular features he could not control. She’d come from the fey woods and brought her own shame with her: An unquenchable thirst to know what lay inside the closed off town that the hunters and woodsmen flowed out from year after year to inflict incalculable harm on the very forest she called home. It had been her and Genki’s shared fascinations with styles of life not their own that had seen them and, over time, a handful of others, romp through the trees of her jungle and explore the back alleys of his city together. Just some odd kids making mischief when most anyone around them wouldn’t offer so much as a kind word. She and Genki had grown up together and gotten into all kinds of trouble together, despite both their parents’ protests. But that had been then. This was now. And things had clearly changed. 

“What are you doing here, Kathrri?” Genki asked. His voice was deeper than she remember it and split between anger and disappointment. “No, I know what you are doing here. What I want to know is why?” 

Kathrri tsked at him, then sighed. She was feeling quite a bit of disappointment of her own. “Why did you join the guard, Genki? It’s not the Hunter’s Lodge or the Logging Guild, but still… We… you… saw what they were doing to my home. And that was years ago. It’s so much worse now!” 

“So bad that you’re here now stealing weapons so you can arm yourselves and kill?” Genki asked in reply. “…And you, you have killed, haven’t you?!” he added. There was sadness and a touch of true anger in his voice now. 

“How did?” was all Kathrri could mumble. How could he know that? Why was he so angry at her? 

“The four men last week they briefed us all on… Dead in an uptown market alley…” Genki was recounting things with an almost hollow voice of realization now. “One had his throat slit almost side to side… Another was in armor but had half his skill almost burnt clean off… And the other two had been stabbed to death. And three of them had been slashed with… with tiger claws… That was you, wasn’t it, Kathrri?” he asked dumbfounded. 

Kathrri couldn’t help but shiver at her friend’s revelation. “Panther claws…” was all that slipped out of her at first as she looked away her face flushed with shame of her best friend having learned what she’d done. But then she took a breath, got her wits back together, and explained.

“I was leading someone through the markets,” she said, slowly. Careful not to reveal too much to the guard who was holding her in place. “Three men from the Hunter’s Lodge surprised us. And I did what I had to do.”

“I never though you’d commit…”

“…murder?!” she interrupted. “It wasn’t…” She tried to push back her rage and find the right words to say. “The only one murdered there was the forth young man. Stabbed to death, but no panther marks or magic on him. You know why? Because that was Bobbit!” she all but yelled now. “You remember Bobbit, right? From when we were kids? Fat. Friendly. Always let us back through the gate. Always knew where to scavenge something delicious to eat even when we had no money. He was one of the four you were briefed about. He was killed because they wanted to send us a further message.” 

“Bobbit? They’d taken the bodies away. There’s no way I could have known…” Genki protested. 

“You didn’t know about Stel, either,” Kathrri continued. “They didn’t kill her. They carried her back to their ‘Lodge’. I found her myself. They’d beaten her bloody and broken and then chained her to a cot. She wouldn’t have lasted two days if I hadn’t come to get her that night. I killed two more doing it. Are you going to complain about them, too?!” 

“You can’t justify…”

“That was her just now. The girl who fled out that door? That was Stel. Miss Wild Magic, we used to call her. Mended up well enough in the last week so we could come here and ready ourselves to fight back against what they did. What they’ve long been doing.” 

“Genki,” Kathrri surmised, though her emotion-drenched words were coming out more like a plea, now, than a statement of fact, “you’re the only one of us from when we were kids who is still here behind the walls. Here helping them tear down my home, and over hunt our animals, and kill my people.”

Genki’s face, which had been twisting with tearful, pent up emotion, suddenly hardened. 

“No,” he said sternly. “I guard the places within the walls they tell me to guard. I break up fights and help people and patrol the town. And people thank me for it! I’m not that shunned little half-orc anymore. And I’m not out there cutting down your forest, or poisoning your river, or… or… whatever your people have accused us of. But you are in here stealing and killing in my home…” 

Kathrri, too, clenched her jaw, but she said nothing. There had been no hesitation in Genki’s voice once he’d started. And there was nothing to say in response. Lines had just been drawn, and they were not on the same side. Kathrri had hoped against hope that maybe he’d come with her. That maybe he was stuck and looking for a way out. That maybe… no. Her task was too important to get caught up in endless maybes. 

“Let me go, Genki,” she said slowly. Threateningly. Giving him one last chance. “Or I’m going to let myself go.”

He reached for her arm and moved to put his sword to her throat as he replied with, “The only place you’re going is…” 

Kathrri didn’t let him finish.

It only took a moment for all the clothing and armor and weapons and weight she’d been saddled with to magically merge into her black-as-the-night panther form. She sprang forward then rebounded off the nearby armory wall and came back towards Genki before he could even raise his sword. Kathrri stuck hard and fast and without mercy. A swipe of her claws to this leg sent him toppling to the ground. A vicious bite to his sword arm saw it rendered useless. Another rake of her claws across his abdomen and belly saw him very nearly out cold with his blood spilling off him and pooling around him on the floor.

But then Kathrri was her elven self again. Kneeling by his side. With a short prayer she opened her connection to the spirits of nature and called forth a regal horse of recovery that sported only a single horn. She then cast a well-worn spell and summoned a cloud of her healing butterflies. The ethereal glowing insects gently landed on Genki and worked to close his wounds. A minute later his eyes fluttered open and she gently gripped his hand in hers. 

“It seems we’ve crossed into two different worlds now, you and I. Or maybe we’ve just returned to our own,” she said, a tear or two now actually falling from her eyes. “I want you to stay here and guard your world. I’m going to return home and do the same for mine. You really… were…my best friend…” 

And with that, she shifted into a feline form once more. 

Kathrri exited the back door of the armory with all her stolen weapons in tow. But she departed not as a terrifying panther who had, out of necessity, attacked and nearly killed her best friend, but as the black-haired kitten she used change into back when they’d played during their childhood.

It was a shame that that, too, like so many precious things, had truly come to an end.