His mind was caught in distant memories. Familiar faces came to him, with narrowed, distrustful eyes, hateful glares and bared teeth. He saw unicorns, humans, beasts and spirits, fey creatures and mundane mortals. He ran, but the ground was an icy slope, and no matter how he struggled, he slid backward toward the abyss. His screams made no sound, and as he scraped and scrabbled at the edge of the precipice, he heard cruel laughter, and felt a rough shove that pushed him over the edge...
Something tickled the end of his nose. It was prickly, and prodded him lightly as it began crawling over his lips. Aréharis took a shallow breath, and snorted.
Phbbbth.The prickly thing shot up the bridge of his nose and lodged itself somewhere between his ears. He flicked them, dimly aware of birdsong greeting the dawn. The ticklish sensation quickly relocated to his cheek. Aréharis regretfully opened one eye, and stared down into the glassy black eyes of the giant tarantula perched on his face.
"Whick off."
The tarantula stared as only a spider can, then scurried off down his neck and burrowing into the messy strands of his mane. The unicorn blinked his other eye open, and shook off the stiffness of sleep, one leg at a time. His swept his tail from side to side, brushing down his barrel with his thick tuft of tail hair.
A wreath of mist lay over the silver surface of the lake. The unicorn had fallen asleep on a hillock overlooking the water. He could see all the way down the sloping embankment to the muddy shore where bulrushes grew, hiding crickets and frogs and other river-dwellers. The morning air was still, hardly a ripple on the lake's smooth sheen, and the leaves of the overhanging willows hung at rest.
Sniff. Sniffsniff."Hmm."
Aréharis wrinkled his nose. Amongst all the usual morning scents he was accustomed to was something he didn't recognise. He smelt dew in the grass, dead insects, the ripe scent of a male deer with an injured hoof that had come grazing through the area yesterday, the sharp tang of a predator (something feline, he was sure) following aforementioned deer... but what was that other scent? Goat? Sheep? There was something else too, a scent that stirred fragments of memory, of southern shores and orchards of ripe...
The unicorn started in alarm. He bounded from his hillock and down the embankment with the wind at his back. Something whizzed by his striped legs, and he gritted his teeth, scarpering from bush to boulder to tree as he tried to break away from his pursuer. Olive trees. That's where he'd smelt it before.
"What kind of hunter washes with
soap at dawn?" Aréharis complained to himself as he slowed his pace to dart through the thick undergrowth. He could feel the tarantula in his mane curling her legs nervously, clinging with determination onto a clump of his hair.
"
She's gaining on you," a voice called to the fleeing unicorn. "
Reckon she'll have a shot at your arse in a moment. Dunno how she missed the first time, the target's big enough."
"She? That explains the soap," Aréharis panted, coming to a halt and squinting skywards through the foliage. The owner of the voice came into sight, a large crow which flapped down through the trees and alighted on a branch with a ruffle of its glossy black feathers. Aréharis eyed the bird hopefully. "Go peck her eyes out, then. I'll leave you the meat if I take her down."
"Get stuffed," the crow replied cheerfully, and cackled. He twisted his head to regard the way the unicorn had come. "She's almost here! Use sorcery, freak-horse!"
"I don't have-..."
"
Five seconds!" the bird cawed loudly. "
Four!"
"I'm not a-...!"
"
Three! Two!"
Aréharis narrowed his eyes and reached for his arcane power, lowering his horn towards the ominous footfalls that were growing louder. He felt every blade of grass as it moved, every lofty branch and twisting root of the trees... and he had an idea.
"
One!"
Just as the hunter, clad in mottled green cloak and an arrow nocked on her finely crafted bow, came bursting through the bushes, Aréharis channeled his energy into the thick roots of a nearby tree, and bade them to grow. The gnarled woody shoots twisted and coiled up from the soil, wrapping around the hunter's ankles and tripping her face-flat onto a boulder. There were a couple of nasty
cracks and a heavy
thud as she toppled over, and the forest was still once more.
"Hah! You'll have to get up earlier next time, if you want.... if you want to..." Aréharis trailed off and peered curiously at the motionless hunter. Elf, he thought, or half-elf half-human. Also, she wasn't moving. The rock was beginning to stain dark with blood as it trickled from her broken nose, and her neck was at an angle nature had never intended it to be. Aréharis scowled, and looked up at the crow. "How tragic."
"Fresh meat, just like you said," the crow said, and fluttered down to start pecking at her exposed neck. Aréharis watched, wondering what that uncomfortable feeling in his stomach was. He told himself it didn't matter. One less enemy out for his blood. He leaned over the body to tug at the roll of parchment sticking out from the hunter's quiver. The crow paused his meal to stare at him beadily. "What're you looking at, big-arse? Freak-horse! No meat for you."
The unicorn had long since stopped rolling his eyes at the ingratitude of others. Wordlessly, he picked up the scroll in his mouth, turned to flick his tail rudely, and stalked off to find a grazing field uncontaminated by talking animals or murderers. Only when he found himself alone, in a quiet, dark copse of trees atop a hill, did he drop the scroll, and roll it out with a cloven hoof.
"This looks bad," Aréharis muttered to himself, as the tarantula scuttled from her hiding place and settled atop his head. They both regarded the wanted poster. "They still can't spell my name."
The tarantula said nothing.
~WANTED~
DEAD OR ALIVE
THE LONG-TAILED UNICORN NAMED ARREHARIS
FOR THE CRIMES OF NECROMANCY, BLOOD MAGIC AND DEMONCRAFT
REWARD PAYABLE FROM THE HONOURABLE JOURNEYMAN BOUNTY ASSOCIATION
1000 GOLD SUNS