Adventure of Young Dave. 1

As Young Dave. prepares to leave the small healer’s hut, Kaelo straightens with no trace of weakness. The cramped room goes still, the warm lamplight catching on the map in his hand.

Kaelo turns the parchment so the inked marks show, then closes his fist around it like a badge. The Healer freezes by the bed, staring at him as if seeing a stranger for the first time.

The lantern flame wavers. Outside, the rain hisses against the door, and the silence where the hunter slept feels suddenly less safe than the shouting before it.

Kaelo does not look away. His calm now has the hard edge of command, and the little hut feels smaller for it.

Young Dave. levels the nearest crossbow and fires. The bolt hammers Kaelo’s hand, knocking the map loose, and the parchment flaps open in the lamplight as he jerks back with a strangled gasp.

A second shot snaps toward The Healer, and the beam beside the bed splits. Wood bites into the wall, but the blast of splinters drives them both flat and clears the doorway.

Young Dave. lunges for the door while the hut is still reeling. The still latch shudders, and rain-wet air surges in around him.

Behind him, the fallen map lies open on the floorboards, its marks catching the lantern glow like fresh wounds. Kaelo clamps a bleeding palm over his wrist, and The Healer stares from the wrecked beam toward the open door.

Young Dave. gets through the doorway, but one crossbow cord snaps in his grip and cuts his palm as he goes. The hut remains behind him, now loud with rain, splintered wood, and Kaelo’s curse.

Young Dave slips from the lantern’s spill and into the rain-dark side of the hut, using the open doorframe as cover. The shadows take him cleanly, and the splintered room loses him at once.

On the floor, the opened parchment catches a breath of wet air and shifts in the lamplight, its lines gleaming like a warning. Kaelo’s bleeding hand clamps tighter as he turns toward the doorway, fear breaking through his anger.

Outside, Young Dave is only a dark shape now, swallowed by the rain and the trees beyond the threshold. The hut keeps its broken beam, its open map, and the ugly silence after betrayal.

Dave’s shot cracks through the hut. Kaelo jerks as the dart takes him high in the throat, and the open map beneath him flashes once in the lamplight.

He stumbles back from the parchment, hands flying to the wound, and the glow under the ink surges brighter across the floorboards.

Kaelo drops to one knee beside the bed, choking wetly, but his bleeding hand still claws toward the doorway as if trying to point through it.

Outside, beyond the rain and the open threshold, the first answering cry rises from the trees, distant but gathering, while the hut’s jagged beam creaks overhead.

Young Dave melts deeper into the hut’s broken shadows, letting the rain and lamplight miss him by inches. The glowing map still paints the floor, but his outline goes thin and hard to catch.

Kaelo claws one hand to the floor and drags himself a little farther from the parchment, his breath ragged and bright with panic.

Outside, the answering voices swell from one into several, moving through the trees toward the doorway. The jagged beam overhead gives a dry, hateful creak.

Young Dave snaps the shot. The lantern shatters on the floor, and flame leaps into the spilled rushes with a hungry hiss.

The fire catches fast, licking up a chair leg and throwing sharp orange light across Kaelo’s bloodless face.

Outside, the first shapes press closer through the rain, their outlines wavering in the doorway as the hut begins to fill with heat and soot.