Veyla Shadewhisper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Veyla Shadewhisper coated her spear tip one slow pass at a time, the way her trainer taught her before a bad dose cost him two fingers. The toxin glowed faint purple under the twilight canopy. She had tracked this Gloomstalker's dragging foot for half a cycle, and she meant to kill it. But this was not a normal Gloomstalker. It was the alpha, the one whose hunts had emptied three settlements and left their people counting their last stores of food. She pressed her ear to the cold soil and listened. Wingbeats, slow and heavy. The alpha roosted somewhere above the village huts. Veyla had heard those wings before, over a fresh kill, and she knew the truth in her gut. Her spear coating would not be enough. On a normal stalker, one full dose barely slowed the legs. This creature carried twice the bulk. It would shrug off anything she could scrape from her containers tonight. She went to the one person who might know a stronger poison. Silvaeth Dreamcaller, the seer who guided the dying through Venara toxin so they could return. Veyla found her outside her hut, sorting sealed containers by the glow of a fungal lamp. Silvaeth did not look up. "Ask it," Silvaeth said. "My dose won't drop the alpha," Veyla said. "It's too big." Silvaeth set down a container. "Then don't use the deathcap." She reached into a fold of her cloak and drew out a tiny cluster of mushrooms, green caps dotted with yellow, glowing sick and bright. "This kills a plainsstalker with one wound. It will drop your alpha." Veyla did not take it. "Your last patient. The Venara dose that went wrong." "He survived," Silvaeth said. She said it first, like she always did. Then, after a beat: "Three days. I did not sleep for any of them." Her hands stayed steady on the cluster. "This one is worse. Prick your own skin and you will not wake. Not even I could pull you back." Veyla held out her palm. "I trust my hands." Silvaeth studied her a long moment. Then she pressed the cluster into Veyla's grip and closed the fingers over it. "One pass. No more. Coat it and set it down." Veyla worked in the dark outside her own hut. She crushed a single cap and dragged its paste along the spear edge, slow, cold, one stroke. The metal glowed a deeper, wrong shade of green. She sealed the rest away and did not let it touch her. The alpha's wings started again above the huts. Veyla lifted the spear. The weight in her hand had changed. Her old dose could never have pierced that bulk. This new poison could kill anything it touched, including her. She stepped toward the sound.