Meeting in the woods. ATTN: anyone

Erchon shut the door lightly on his family's small home and went out into the warm autumn evening.

The moon rose over the edge of the mountains that jutted into the sea near the horizon. Still even without moonlight he could see well enough in the dark, better than a human at any rate.

He glanced at the town green, where the feast continued. The village was still beautiful even how it had grown over the past year. Foxes, wolves and so forth had all since found their way here bringing their own customs. He smiled; Kallos was no longer a gnoll village even if humans still called it that.

Though the bonfire still burned bright he turned away from town and took the circuitous path through the woods stopping just before the offering cave.

He placed and lit his Eluthanai lamp on a mossy boulder. Then withdrawing his river stone called the shade.

The little spirit chirped as they took form and he offered his little friend some of the food he snuck off with from the harvest meal.

Suddenly his ears were alert as footsteps were heard on the path. He shivered, tucking the stone into his pocket.

Ozzy started walking back from the feast, finishing earlier than he thought he would. He didn't have much of an appetite today after learning of his supposed "fate." He thought spending time with some of the locals at the feast would help take his mind off of the news, but it didn't. Spending time with all of these people, knowing that in the future they would mourn for him... it hurt more than he'd like to admit. But one of the people he desperately wanted to talk to about this was nowhere to be found.

Erchon is one of Ozzy's closest friends, and really the one person he could talk to about this whole mess.

Every year the town of Kallos hosts the Day of Pickering; an event named after the founder of Kallos, Manford Pickering. According to the history records (Ozzy works at the town office on his spare time), Manford Pickering had discovered this land centuries ago, and claimed it as sacred ground for all fur kind. It became a sort of sanctuary for all furries to protect themselves from the hatred and bigotry of the human race. The town of Kallos eventually became a historical landmark for all to see.

While the prejudice against furs still remain to this day, it has slowly decreased ever so slightly. Every year for the Day of Pickering, people from all over come to celebrate the festival with the people of Kallos. This is where Ozzy's situation comes into play. A few hours before the feast had begun, Ozzy was returning home from his job at the town office. A human girl ran up to him and kindly offered to read him his future. This was a common thing that many travelers from Anoviel had offered to furs on this day. Most of them were clearly fakes, because humans rarely want to share their power with furs.

Ozzy, however, has a lot on his mind recently. He sees the lives of others around him. Everyone seems to know what their place is in the world except for him. He doesn't ever see himself becoming good with magic like his close friend Erchon, and he doesn't see himself working at the town office keeping track of all the records that no one even cares for but himself. He wants to feel like his life means something other than just being a bystander in everyone else's story. He accepted the girl's offer, and he followed her to the outskirts of town and into the forest.

A circle of rocks was placed in the middle of an open field. The girl led Ozzy into the circle with her. She placed her palms on his paws. She closed her eyes, mumbling a language unfamiliar to Ozzy. Then, she went quiet. She immediately opened her eyes and shouted "DEATH!" She grabbed Ozzy's wrist, and a painful shock ran into his veins. He could feel something burning into his fur and into his skin. He screamed in pain, trying to get the young girl's hands off of him. Tears flooded his face as he fell to his knees in agony. The girl finally let go of his wrist, and said, "You have been marked for death, you puny wolf."

Ozzy laid there wincing in pain. He brought his wrist up to see the damage. A weird unknown symbol had been burned into him. He didn't know what to do. The girl had to have been long gone by now. Going to the guards won't do any good; they're all probably drunk off their butts. There was only one person that could help him, and he'd be able to see him during the festival.

Ozzy couldn't find Erchon anywhere. There was never a year that Erchon would miss the festival, so where is he? Ozzy began telling himself things to make himself feel better. This is all some twisted cruel joke from the humans. Yeah, sure they burned him, but maybe they just wanted to mess with him. There's no way he could be marked for death, right? That never happens to people. At least, he doesn't hear that happening to people here. But so many strangers come from all over. Is there a chance that maybe...?

Ozzy lost his appetite and left the festival before he could even finish dessert

The only place that Ozzy could think of where Erchon would be right this second would be at his family's house. Ozzy knocks on the door, but no one answers. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone walking towards the outside of town and into the woods. I gave him a painful memory of what had just occurred a couple hours ago. Was that the girl from before? He couldn't get a good glimpse of the figure, but if it really was that girl, there was no way he was going to let her get away.

Ozzy silently followed the figure's path. Having grown up as a wolf and a son to a professional hunter, these instincts of his come into play. But it becomes more than that. Ozzy had this gift of his that allowed him to see the way he wanted to go. He would never get lost in the woods because he had this colorful trail that led him to wherever he desired. No one ever believed him when he told people, but according to his father, it's called the Hunter's Gift. An ability that is passed down throughout his family. This is humorous to Ozzy at times. He constantly asks himself how he can see things like this, but he can't even see his own path to his future. He notices, however, that the path doesn't follow where he was previously led to before. It led to a different part of the woods; a part he had never been to before despite the many times he had explored almost every inch of it.

There stood some sort of cave, and his close friend Erchon standing right in front of it. From what Ozzy could see, Erchon was not alone. Some spirit of some kind was in his presence. Ozzy makes a few more steps to get a closer look of what's happening when he steps into some fallen leaves, making a very audible sound that alerts Erchon.

He turns around and looks into Ozzy's direction. He had no time to hide. He stood out like a sore thumb in the forest. All he could do was stand there awkwardly and say, "Hi, Erchon."

“Gasp…” Erchon let startled, and gave a sigh of relief as he recognized his friend Ozzy. He brought the shade’s stone back out of his pocket as he realized who it was.

His ma may have given tacit approval after his sister started teaching him their people’s craft but the taboo of gnoll men practicing magic still persisted even if his ma was the town witch.

He smiled and then frowned as his friend approached. The wolf appeared melancholy, and Erchon lowered his own ears in concern.

“Ozyy, you alright?” He asked.

Ozzy saw the look of concern on his friend's face. He had almost forgotten why he had wanted to find Erchon so badly in the first place. Ozzy stares down at his wrist, now wrapped in bandages to conceal the wound... and the mark. Luckily for him, no one at the festival asked about it. Ozzy hesitates, but slowly starts to unwrap his bandages and reveal the mark to Erchon

The wound has healed a bit since the last he saw it, but that horrible symbol still remains.

Ozzy walks closer to show Erchon the mark, hoping for his friend to give him some form of clarity to what has happened to him.

"Erchon, I think..." Ozzy chokes up before he can finish his sentence. He was hoping that not saying the words out loud would make the situation less worse.

"I think I'm going to die."

Moments pass as Erchon stares at the mark, his friend’s words echoing in his mind. “I think I’m going to die.”

He holds his lamp to see in more detail the odd wound revealed by the bandage. He was new to the ways of magic, but he could feel the little shade shiver as he inspected his friend’s arm.


He tried not to frown for Ozzy’s sake. Still he could feel his familiar’s anxiety, and chthonic power that it is he worried too.

“Tell me what happened?” He asked.

Ozzy explains the events of the day with Erchon. The girl, the mark, the feast, and now the woods. Throughout his entire life, Ozzy has never experienced such things before. Even having a friend involved in magic like Erchon, he wasn't subjected to such levels of intensity as much as today. He hopes that his friend has answers for him. But... something needs to be said.

"Erchon, I was looking all over for you today. We always meet each other during the festival, but you weren't there. Where were you?"

Erchon listened, and his eyes grew wide as Ozzy explained the incident with the fortune teller. Human magic was shockingly different from the gnolls, or even what he had learned from the Eluthanai merchant who he bought his lamp from.

Then the bite. His ears fell as his friend’s distress mounted before he finished “But you weren’t there. Where were you?” he asked.

Erchon opened his mouth then closed it again. He meant to say he’d been there and left early but a defense wasn’t what his friend needed, not when he was otherwise distressed. He had wanted to practice magic away from the eyes of those who believe in the taboo of a man approaching the Powers of the Earth.

He frowned and petted the little which chirped and rattled, at his touch.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, “I should have told you what I was up to. I’m still afraid to let people see my magic, and today…” he fell short looking again at the wound. “Pickering aligns with a holy day for traditions of my ancestors. I’d hoped after dark to make my own offerings where none would see.” It had only been a few months since his sister Kalliope started to teach him.

“Im sorry,” he said again, “I didn’t think you’d think you’d be interested in coming with me, still I should have found you and told you.”

Remorse was replaced with concern as his eyes returned to the wound. “She told you that you were marked for death?" That’s awfully vague, fortune tellers were like that but the mark still gave him pause. "Did she say when?”

"No, she didn't."

Ozzy feels himself breaking each moment he has to speak. He thought that maybe Erchon would tell him that it was all nonsense. That the girl hadn't put some curse on him, and that it was all in his head. But judging by the look on Erchon's face, it was clear that this was serious.

Tears start to stream down Ozzy's face. "Erchon... I'm scared. I'm.."

Ozzy starts to choke back soft sobs

"I'm not ready to die. Not now."

Ava works as a barkeep in one of Kallos' many taverns. She enjoyed the work for the most part, as it was a far cry from her past as a slave she hated talking about, and especially since she loved talking gossip with the customers (she may have been a stereotypical fox in that way, but she had good rapport with the usuals and they always loved the conversation). However, she always got irritated working during festivals due to how busy the tavern got. Especially during the Day of Pickering with its historical significance and all.

On this particular Day of Pickering, one rowdy patron really started to get on her nerves. A slightly rotund human seemed to have been... particularly enamored by Ava and kept making untoward comments about her appearance to her.

Ugh... I thought I left this shit behind in Aurummouth, she thought.

She wasn't used to this kind of behavior since she moved to Kallos some years ago, as the village's matriarchal society still somewhat lingered in the culture. But so much was to be expected Anovielan humans just there to party.

It got to the point where the fur on her neck started to bristle, enough to where the tavern's owner noticed it and started to intervene in the "conversation." The owner usually worked in the back to work on financials and such, but she helped out on busy days such as today, especially for cases like this. (A big burly gnoll woman butting in is usually enough to stop these type of folk, after all.)

Despite the owner injecting herself into the conversation, however, this man now started to make the same kind of comments involving the two of them together. Ava felt her face and ears getting flushed and she was about to explode on the customer when the tavern's owner told Ava to take a break for a little while and get some fresh air. Ava thanked the owner, grabbed her pipe, and headed out the back.

The owner never told her an amount of time to take a break for, so she decided to be a little loose with the meaning of "a little while." She spoke some words to make a small flame, enough to light her pipe (a neat trick the tavern owner taught her, she thought), and went on her way along the path to the woods. The tavern was on the edge of the town, so she would often take a stroll through the woods when she took a break for lunch. She planned to take just that route now as well, but she noticed something off on her walk, some pawprints veering off the path and deeper into the woods.

"How strange..." she muttered as she started to follow these pawprints. Curiosity often got the best of her, even if she knew it was a bad idea to investigate things like this.

The more and more she followed the prints, she started to hear some voices, which just made her even more curious (it could be more juicy gossip!). She was able to start making out some sort of cave she wasn't familiar with and a couple of figures, a gnoll and a wolf maybe? But she couldn't quite make out what they were saying, and she really wanted to know if they were regulars at the tavern, so she started to inch her way forward, hiding behind trees and getting pretty close until...

*SNAP!* In that moment, the crack of the tree branch felt like the loudest sound in the world, and she knew the two figures she was trying to spy on heard it.

Dammit, cover blown...

Erchon pulled his distressed friend into a hug. And the little shade drifted over to pat the wolf’s back.

He didn’t know what to say. There was so much about magic, especially human magic, that he didn’t know about. Part of him wished his Ma or even Kestrel were here.

He squeezed Ozzy before speaking, deciding to be honest. “I don’t know how serious it is. There’s magic in the burn but it's different from the powers I know.”

He looked at his friend. The Old Powers touched close to the cycle of death and rebirth; he opened his mouth to speak when a crack echoed through the woods.

His eyes were sharp in the dark but even still he didn’t know shape nor smell of the person who’d crept up on them, but he could feel a bit of magic hanging on them.

He hid the shade stone in his pocket. Gnoll magic might be taboo for him to know but the ways of the Eluthanai were not.

He took up his lamp and called out the demon’s blessing “The light of the Flame guards my path!” The color of the flame he held shifted from yellow to a deep scarlet and brilliant light filled the clearing.

A foxen woman stood a ways off in the woods. He didn’t know how, or at least not well, but he knew he’d met her somewhere.

“Ava?” he called as her name came into focus suddenly in his mind.

The name sounded familiar to Ozzy. He took a better look at the fox and immediately recognized her. She was a friend of Darlanna, Ozzy's sister.

The two met when Ava had first moved to town a couple of years back. She had gotten a job as a barkeep at one of the town taverns that Darlanna was working at called The Burning Rabbit.

(For as long as Ozzy has worked at the town office keeping track of all the records, he never could find out why it had ever gotten that name. Perhaps the original owner thought it was interesting.)

Darlanna eventually left Kallos to attend the college of Yermen, a prestigious school for the most intellectual minds of the land.

Ozzy had thought about attending as well someday, but the fear of exploring a place outside of Kallos (especially a place historically known for being very prejudice to all furs to the point of not allowing any to attend until recently) kept him put. Ozzy's feelings of becoming a failure and burden to everyone around him worsened whenever his family would remind him of his decision. Whenever a letter would come in the mail from his sister, or if someone from town recently had a son or daughter leave for Yermen, or just whenever the topic of "future" came up at all. He'd be reminded that he could have a good life if he'd go to this special place. A place built off of nothing but generational prejudice that is only choosing now to try to "right the wrongs."

And judging by the letters he's received from his sister, nothing is really being done about the certain behavior from other peers and faculty. She tells him how she's constantly looked down upon by so many people in her classes. She says she's thankful for the kind friends she has, but she shouldn't have to endure any of this in the first place. Her letters don't exactly encourage Ozzy to want to go to Yermen, but the behavior from the rest of his family as well as other townspeople certainly doesn't make him want to stay in Kallos either.

Sometimes, whenever Ozzy gets upset about his uncertain future, he silently blames his sister. He doesn't want to do that; he loves her, and besides Erchon she's the only one he felt safe to talk to about anything. But he feels sometimes that if she had never left Kallos, maybe he wouldn't feel so miserable all the time. Maybe he wouldn't have made the dumb mistake of going to a stranger about his hopelessness.

No. No, he's not going to do that. There's no one to blame about this situation but himself. And that girl, of course.  

Ozzy had seen Ava from time to time at the family house, but not very often. Only to really spend time with Darlanna. She'd had friends, but she seemed relatively close to Ava. Ozzy hadn't seen her ever since Darlanna left Kallos. He guesses she never had a reason to visit him if his sister wasn't there.

And now she's here, in the woods, with him and Erchon

"Ava, what are you doing here?"

Right after Ava stepped on that branch, she heard an incantation and was then blinded by a bright light. She wanted to run away as fast as she could, worried that her morbid curiosity was finally going to be the end of her, but she was too paralyzed in fear to do it. But as her eyes started to adjust to the light, she realized the two figures were just standing there, and one of them started to speak...

"Ava?"

"Ava, what are you doing here?" the other one asked.

Ava blinked a few times and started walking a little closer, realizing these two probably didn't have bad intentions. As she got closer to them her eyes finally adjusted to the light and got a look at their faces. They both looked familiar, and she realized who they were after a few seconds. It was then she finally let go of that tension she had built up in that moment.

Though she was not good at most things in life (her old life never gave her a chance to really get good at anything), Ava's ability to remember people she met was better than most. She could even remember one-off encounters from years back, though she was better acquainted than that with these two.

It only took Ava a short moment to recognize Ozzy, even though he was noticeably older since the last time she had interacted with him. She knew him by way of her best friend in the town Darlanna, whom Ava had met soon after moving into Kallos. When she first moved in, she was mistrusting of most strangers, but Darlanna gave her a hand after she had too much to drink one night at The Burning Rabbit and they hit it off after that night, and Darlanna was able to hook Ava up with a job there too! She would hang out with Darlanna at her family's house occasionally, and would sometimes interact with Ozzy when she was there but didn't see him outside of that. When Darlanna left for college, she hadn't seen Ozzy again until this point. (She still exchanged letters with Darlanna every once in a while, though not as frequently as she'd like; she couldn't help but feel like their connection was slowly drifting apart the longer Darlanna was away.)

It took her a little longer to recognize Erchon, however, as she had only interacted with him a handful of times since she had gotten the job at The Burning Tavern. He occasionally would come into the tavern looking for Iris (the tavern's owner), though Ava would often have to write down messages to leave as Iris wasn't in the building often. She never really knew exactly what it was Erchon needed, as the messages she took always seemed rather vague, but Erchon seemed like an alright guy to her anyway and they never had an unpleasant exchange.

As Ava felt her shoulders relaxing and the bristled fur on her neck going back down, she still struggled to find words to respond to Erchon and Ozzy.

Ava finally managed to eke out some words, but not too well-phrased as she didn't want to reveal she was shirking her bartending duties or that she was trying to spy on them last-minute. "Umm... I was just... on a walk."

Erchon let the light dim a bit as he let out a sigh of relief. Though he still let the Flame’s power resinate in his soul.

The shade bobbed over to the fox and chortled a cheerful greeting. Erchon brought his paw to his face. Though Ozzy had known well of Erchon’s time learning to befriend the shade he hadn’t been prepared for them to be generally known. He was only relieved that Ava wasn’t one of his aunts.

As the shade traced their sinuous path through the air, Erchon could feel their curious delight at a bit of magic lingering on Ava.  He knew just enough that it was different from the forms he studied.

“You know some magic?” he asked, too dumbfounded to give a proper greeting. “Ozzy,” he said, turning to the wolf, “Do you…” hi cut short realizing he didn’t know how well Ozzy knew this person, nor if he wanted to divulge the mark the human girl gave him.


“It’s up to you, but maybe she might know something.” He finally said.

Ozzy thinks for a moment wondering if its okay to involve Ava in this situation.

It has been a long while since he's seen her last. She never came to visit him or his family after Darlanna left. It made Ozzy feel once again like a bystander in someone else's story. He's not one for holding grudges, but it hurt when Ava never came to visit again. However, knowing that he might have limited time on this earth, maybe he should try and forget that for now.

Eventually he's going to ask her why she stayed away for so long, but for now, there are more pressing matters.

She's a good friend of Darlanna, and if she could trust Ava, then so could Ozzy.

"Ava is a friend, so we can trust her with this."

In just the last minute, so much had happened that Ava was having troubles processing everything that had just happened. What the hell was it Erchon just did, what do you mean I know magic, what's this little cute shadowy thing doing bouncing around, why are they acting like someone just died? It all seemed really strange and a bit suspicious to her, but she never thought the two to be the sketchy type so she put aside those thoughts for now. She had regained her composure at this point and asked the most pressing question on her mind, in a caring and concerned manner.

"...Is everything all right? You both look like you've seen a ghost," she said as her eyes glanced toward the shadowy creature and she let out a slight smirk. She couldn't help but make a little wisecrack since she knew she was among good people, to try and ease the tension that still lingered in the air.

“...Is everything all right? You both look like you've seen a ghost.”

Erchon let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as Ava cracked a joke. He eyed Ozzy, if he trusted her he supposed he could tell Ava what he understood so far.

“Aye, well…” he said thinking of where to start, “Some human showed up to the Pickering festival and offered to read our friend here’s fortune.”

“She burned him what good, and told him he was going to die, ‘marked for death’ or something like that.”

He shook his head, “Normally I’d think someone had pranked him, but well…” he glanced up at the wisp “My little friend there helps me sense the magic in things, problem is I only a little bit of lore, and none of it human ‘arcana’,” He said.

“My little friend tells me you’ve got a bit of magic hanging in that pipe of yours. If Ozzy don’t object I thought you might take a look.”

Ava had never had really any experience with magic, or so she thought. In her old life as a slave she had only ever seen it used for evil, as a means to keep slaves in line. In the most extreme cases, such as those planning a mass escape or overthrowing the masters, she had seen some friends get branded for death, dying just a few days after receiving it, to make an example for others who might try to follow the same plan. (As she has seen it being used for good in Kallos, she has warmed up to it a little, though her trauma causes her to shy away from wanting to see or learn it.)

So when she heard the words "marked for death" come from Erchon's mouth, her joking demeanor dropped and her heart sank. She waited for Erchon to finish speaking, and then she spoke with a bit of a tremble in her voice...

"Oh Gods, what have they done to poor little Ozzy... I-I don't really know magic myself, but I can take a look..."

(She did make a mental note to ask about the magic in the pipe later, but put that aside for now as she was more worried about her best friend's brother in the moment.)

Ozzy only just now noticed that he was hiding his arm behind his back. He instinctively wanted to hide it from people; mainly because of how bad it looked. It doesn't look like it will heal anytime soon; especially considering it was done by magic.

One thing Ozzy learned through Erchon was that any physical harm done by magic usually stays on one's body forever. Even once a corpse has fully decayed, a mark will be left on the skeleton.

One of Ozzy's coworkers at the town hall, Donavan, has a small scar on his ankle that he showed him one time. Donavan explained that he received it after playing tricks on old man Mr. Evans, his neighbor. He and another friend, who were kids at the time, were throwing rocks at the old man's windows when a flash of lightning came and struck them down. Donavan was able to make it out okay despite the small scar, but his friend got the worse of it and died later due to his injuries. While Mr. Evans pleaded that he had nothing to do with the incident ("some freak lightning storm that came out of nowhere" according to the witness statements Ozzy read up on), the medical examiner discovered the mark on the kid's body and concluded that this was death by magic.

This incident caused a huge conundrum in town. Many people wanting to band any form of magic use inside of Kallos. More importantly, people wanted punishment placed on the old man for what he did to the kids.

One side argued that Mr. Evans was justified in his actions, and that he should walk free with no punishment.

"He was defending his property. He didn't know they were dumb kids. He's innocent."

"Those kids got what was coming to them. Tormenting a poor old man like that."

Another side demanded he be punished.

"He knew what he was doing. He knew damn well how dangerous magic like that could be."

"That bastard should get what's coming to him for taking away our child from this world. From US!" (This statement came from the kid's mother, according to more statements Ozzy read.)

This predicament did not outlaw magic at the slightest, but instead increased the penalty of using such magic in a way that harms another person. With this change in the law, Mr. Evans was the first person to receive the death penalty in his charges of magic homicide.

Looking at the mark as Ozzy moves his arm from behind his back, he wonders if the girl that did this to him will receive punishment. Ozzy doesn't want her to die, but to at least pay for what she's done to him and quite possibly to others, and to make sure she doesn't do this to anyone else ever again. But most of all, he hopes that she is caught so she can unbreak whatever curse she had put on him. If it can even be unbroken.

Knowing that he will have to wake up every day to see that scar for the rest of his life (which he has no idea how long will be) upsets Ozzy. He hesitantly shows Ava the mark on his arm, hoping to have an answer to this messed up situation.

"So... what do you think?"

Erchon found himself holding his breath again as Ozzy brought his arm forward again. Magical malfeasance was rare among the Kalloi. He knew it had happened; it was among the reasons gnoll women closely guarded the lore of the Powers of the Earth.

The little shade shivered again as the wolf revealed the wound to Ava.

"So... what do you think?" Ozzy said, showing the fox his arm.

The death marks Ava had seen in her past life looked similar to burn scars with a slightly purple hue, with a pattern that looked like sprawling thorny vines to her. She had never seen any other kinds of death mark, so she figured that is what they all looked like. So surprise struck Ava when she looked at the mark on Ozzy's arm, as while it did look like a purplish burn scar, it had a very different design.

Even if the mark wasn't exactly like ones she's seen in the past, it was similar enough to bring back memories she didn't want to dig back up. She hadn't told anyone in town anything about her old life besides Iris and Darlanna and recounting that even to them was difficult for her. It's a good thing she put more in her pipe than she usually would, else the stress from earlier at the tavern and from recalling all this would likely have sent her into a full on panic.

She tried to speak calmly and collected, but she couldn't help but speak with a bit of trembling in her voice. "I think... I think this is like something I've seen before, but it's different..." She left her statement there to linger, not wanting to think about her past any more than she had to already.

Ozzy waits for Ava to continue her sentence. When she stays quiet for a minute, he speaks up.

"What do you mean by 'different,' Ava? How many of these marks have you seen?"

Ozzy can't help but let the fear rise with his voice. He was really hoping that this wasn't a curse, and that it was just some way that humans were wanting to screw with him. But Ava's concern and the way she is trembling now is proof enough that this is serious, and that Ozzy is in grave danger.

Ozzy doesn't know Ava's past all that well. Darlanna didn't ever tell him anything despite the many times he's asked. That's what made his sister a good person. She was trustworthy and loyal to the people she cared about. Ozzy shares that trait as well, but unfortunately that makes his parents want him to follow in his sister's footsteps even more.

Ozzy notices that Ava is trembling more due to his tone of voice, and he immediately apologizes.

"I'm sorry, Ava. I didn't mean to raise my voice at you. I'm just really scared. I understand if you went through some terrible times in your past, and it's unfair of me to ask you to resurface those memories, but Erchon and I need to know what we are dealing with."

In her mild panic, Ava's eyes were darting around a bit, trying to think of some excuse to leave the situation. The only thing that really came to mind was getting back to work, but as painful as recounting these memories to the two in front of her would be, it still beat having to go back to the tavern and dealing with asshole customers. So she took a large hit from her pipe, let out a large puff of smoke, and started taking some deep breaths to calm herself down. When the awkward silence became too much to bear for her, she started speaking.

"So... I've only told a couple of people in Kallos about this, including your sister Ozzy, so I'd like you both to keep this between the three of us. I used to be a... slave for the Aurummouth royal family..." she said, choking up near the end.

A little more silence followed as Ava worked to calm herself again. She cleared her throat and continued, cutting to the chase to avoid sharing the most painful details. "The slave drivers would use a similar kind of magic to punish slaves who tried to organize an uprising or an escape, the mark on their arms serving as an example to keep the rest of the slaves in line. They died within a few days -- but your mark has a different pattern than the ones I've seen before. They looked like thorny vines, but yours looks more like a whirlpool. So it's hard to say... how much longer you have, but the purplish color does make it look like... like a death brand to me."

Hearing the words "death brand" sent shivers down Ozzy's spine, and made his heart skip a beat. All hopes of this being nothing vanished. Ozzy was going to die. He looked back down at the mark on his arm. He hated it. He wished he could cut it off so he'd never have to see it again

Wait...could that work? No, of course not, he thought to himself. Magic is much more complex than that. It's ingrained into his bones and his very soul. Cutting off his arm wouldn't do anything. Even if there was a chance of that working, there's also a chance he could die from blood loss, so he'd die either way.

Ozzy glances back up at Ava. She's staring at the mark again with a distressed look. Ozzy could tell that seeing a death brand again must be forcing her to recollect bad memories from when she was a slave. He can't imagine what that must have been like for her. And she was brave enough to share her experience with Ozzy and Erchon.

"Thank you for telling us all of this, Ava. I'm so sorry you went through that."

Ava glances away from Erchon and Ozzy with a distant look in her eyes as she takes another hit from her pipe. Ozzy continues.

"But...please....please tell me there's a way to fix this."

Erchon stood back and watched as Ava examanded Ozzy’s arm, his mouth agape as she described her history as a slave and her recognition of the death brand.

Still bits of lore swirled in his head as Ava spoke. He didn’t know a thing about death brands, but the Powers of the Earth his people venerated were chthonic, closely tied to death and the underworld. The religion of the Eluthanai on the other hand held a central story about resisting slavery enforced by magic.

He returned his lamp to the mossy stone as he opened his pack to find the book he had ‘borrowed’ from his ma.

“I’d planned on making an offering tonight” Erchon said brought his books to the lamp’s light. The pages read in his family’s Infernal dialect. “I don’t know a lot, but by Flame and Shade I can heal a cut, and close a wound… this though.” He gestured to Ozzy’s arm “This is beyond anything I’ve studied.”


“Still this book might give us something...” He cut short and turned to Ava, “You said a few days?” he caught his breath. He didn’t know enough. His ma might, but the fox also said this looked different. There was no telling for sure if it was the same length of time.

“I wish my ma were here.”

Ava was worried no one in the village would know anything about these death marks, besides knowing they existed like she did. Her concerns were validated with Erchon confirming he hadn't seen anything like it in his studies, and she looked dejected as she stared at the ground, slowly nodding as Erchon asked her about death coming a few days after the death brand.

"I wish my ma were here." Erchon mused, the silence lingering for a bit after he said that. That thought gave Ava an idea, but...

Ava really didn't like having to rely on others for help, as she didn't want to be a burden on others. Perhaps it was because such things would have caused them to be killed in her old life, yet the feeling still remained; even Darlanna helping her get a job at the Burning Rabbit was difficult for her to accept and the only reason she did accept was more due to Darlanna's persistence than anything else.

However, she had no clue how to heal the mark herself, and she knew Darlanna would be devastated if anything had happened to Ozzy, so she spoke up.

"...if Erchon's ma isn't around, why don't we ask Iris back at the tavern? She might know something..."

She really didn't know if she'd know anything, but something was better than nothing, and she did know Erchon talked with her at times. And if they were to fix this, they needed to act quickly, especially since none of them knew how much time Ozzy had left. If there was any hope to fix it...