Harlowe stood before the door to Marcus' home. She'd heard about where it was from the locals in the Folly. The building was situated next to the Nebelwald and she could see various pixies flit between tree branches. Their tittering set her on edge. She tried to ignore the annoyances and knocked on the smith's door. 

Something moved behind the door and it opened. She could see no one near the door who could have opened it. Inside was the rhythmic sound of hammer taps on a mostly formed piece. Harlowe ignored the lack of anyone who could have opened the door and stepped into the forge area. Marcus' bald head shined with sweat as he carefully tapped a hot piece of metal. If he had noticed her he made no sign of it, so she merely watched him go about his work. His deft and practiced strikes shaped the oblong piece of metal into a spearhead. 

He doused the piece in oil and turned to Harlowe. “I see Vance let you in, hello.” Marcus stood and returned to the bellows, ready to reheat the metal for further work. “So, what brings you here… Marlowe, was it?” 

She shook her head. “It’s Harlowe and I’m here because Clair had too much to drink last night.” 

“Did she now?” Marcus laughed and nearly lost his rhythm with the bellows. “After that night over a decade ago she was out for almost two days because her head would not stop hurting and she couldn’t go more than a few steps before dry heavin’.” 

"Sounds like she's actually better at handling it now, even though from what she's told me, she's about half as big." Harlowe watched him put the spearhead in to be heated again. "I'm assuming that's for her."

Marcus held the partially finished blade in the heat of his forge. "Aye, that it is. When I finish this piece, would you mind lettin' me have a look at your arm?"

Her mouth curled into a snarl beneath her mask. "I can show you my spare, but I did work on this just recently and would prefer not to have it picked at." 

"I understand, won't pry." He pulled the metal out and began shaping it again.

Harlowe watched as it took shape. It had an oblong blade that flowed into a cross shape. "A bear spear? Probably the right choice for what we're hunting."

"You got it right, not many folk pay attention to the variations of weapons they don't use or make." Marcus tapped the cross shaped section into shape. "The shape o' a weapon can change a lot about how it performs, even if it don't seem like it would."

"I'm well aware." She sighed. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Marcus continued tapping at the spearhead. "I can think of a few things."

"Well, let's hear it."

——————

Beatrix pulled down on her bow and with a shaking hand strung it. She looked over to her lover, Rene. The mage was still fast asleep under a robe she was using as a blanket. Bea leaned her bow against the wall and stood up. She walked over to her sleeping partner and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. The woman murmured in her sleep.

Bea picked up her bow and placed it in its sling. "I'll be home later, Rene," she whispered as she left their shared home.

The wards would reactivate mostly on their own. The talk about sealing up when Clair visited was mostly just Rene showing off. She crossed the main street and headed towards the tree line. 

"Sis," said a familiar voice.

Bea stopped dead in her tracks and slowly turned her head to face the man. "Hello Berthold."

He looked at her with a raised brow. "Planning on going looking alone?" 

"Well…" she scratched at her cheek. 

"Sis, you can't just go out there alone, especially without even telling anyone," he said, his expression flat. "You didn't even tell Rene, did you?"

"O-of course I did!" She shouted.

Berthold folded his arms. "It doesn't count if she's asleep when you say it."

Bea grit her teeth. "Bro, I know the woods better than practically anyone in the village. You don't need to baby me." She turned to head into the Nebelwald. "Besides, I've told you now. It's not like no one knows where I'm going."

Berthold's upper lip curled. He reached out to the land, to the trees of the Nebelwald. "Beatrix…" a root wrapped around her ankle. "I'm not going to lose you over your pride."

"I'm going to be fine, we aren't kids anymore." She grabbed a knife from her side.

Small motes of green and brown floated around his hands. "I know, neither of us are kids anymore. I just want to make sure you're safe." 

"Berthold, I'm going. I'm not going to wait around and make her save us again." She swung the knife through the grasping root and ran into the Nebelwald.

"Shit." Berthold inhaled and worked to calm himself. "At least she paid her tribute to the fae this past solstice."

Bea ran deeper into the forest until she was certain her brother hadn't followed her in. She took a moment to catch her breath and get her bearings. Over the years she had learned the woods well and with a quick scan on her surroundings she knew where she was. A river that would be frozen over was some distance to the east and one of the better more commonly used grazing areas for the local elk was.to the south… which meant that the cavern she'd seen in the scrying mirror would be north-northeast.

——————

Vance looked at Harlowe, they had seen her before at the Folly but there had been other things that kept their attention more readily at the time. Now, however, both their father and Harlowe were working in the forge area. The half-ghoul scared Vance, she felt wrong to them. Pixies and the hidden people told Vance about what she was, a monster, but even that knowledge didn't deter them.  At least, not entirely. Vance looked on as the ghoul woman carefully wove a set of chainmail using her artificial hand and a set of pliers lent to her by Marcus.

"Smith, your child has been staring at me for the past two hours." Harlowe bent and spot welded another ring using the point of one of the needles she kept between her knuckles. "I don't think they like me."

Marcus shrugged as he continued to whittle down a length of wood to fit it in a lathe. "It's probably all the iron in your limbs."

Harlowe twisted another ring into place. "Not exactly my fault. I heard your child was part Fae." Energy arced from the needle between her knuckles to the ends of the ring where they pressed together.

"Aye, Vance's mum is the Spring Maiden herself, Vesna." He cut away a long strip of wood. "That's an interesting trick you've got there." 

"You think so?" Harlowe bent another ring. "It's not too special, you should see the mage-smiths at the Spire or the artificers of the Admiralty." Another arc of energy. "They put my skills to shame. You do all of your smithing entirely by hand and through mundane techniques?"

Marcus nodded. "Didn't have the natural talent or the mind for magery. So I do my craft the way a common man would." He stood up and placed the rough hewn dowel into his lathe. "Because I am a common man."

"Common men don't bed a fae lord." Harlowe chuckled. 

"Maybe we do, Harlowe." He looked at her with a smirk. 

"Common men also don't handle themselves as calmly as you did with the ghoul back at the Folly." Another ring was welded into place.

"I'm not a great man, if that's what you are implying." Marcus fixed the cutting edge of the lathe in place. "My Da called himself a great man, he wasn't by any definition."

Harlowe went to speak, but stopped as she saw Vance emerge from their hiding place. "I think you're great, Da."

She smirked. "See, your whelp thinks you are."

Marcus sighed and walked over to Vance. "Yer probably the only one who I'll believe when they say it." He mussed Vance's hair and pulled them into a hug. 

Harlowe watched, her eyes burning. Marcus must have had a rough relationship with his father. She welded another loop closed. He's holding that hug a long time, they both are. She missed her family, but it wasn't as though she could see them. It wasn't due to her curse either. Their deaths were what cancelled her first big plans in life. She hadn't flunked out of the College on the Moors, but had returned home to care for her ailing parents. As she watched Vance and Marcus hug, she couldn't help but wonder how Vance would handle having to bury their father someday.

——————

Berthold bent down and pulled out the stone dagger Elder Gerd used in her rituals. If Bea was going to go off alone, he would at least watch her. He rose back up and stared down at the thin sheet of polished quartz that laid atop a bed of river stones.

"How did this go again?" He asked himself. 

Berthold wasn't particularly skilled at much in the way of magic, the trick with the root earlier was about as much as he was able to manage in combat spells. Gerd had focused mostly on teaching him the customs and traditions he'd be expected to practice when she passed on. Actual spellwork was barely touched upon and that fact was becoming obvious as he tried to mimic the Elder's movements with the athame he now held.

"Alright, raise the blade high before cutting flesh to symbolize the uh…" he held the stone knife aloft. "Then return it to a neutral…" he felt like a fool. "The Fae like blood, I'll just use that."

He grit his teeth and cut a thin line on his forearm, near the wrist. Warm crimson flowed slowly from the shallow cut. A few droplets fell to the floor before he remembered to get it onto the quartz. 

"Okay, you've seen the Elder do it before." 

He focused his mind on his sister. The blood that had fallen onto the stone seeped into it and the vision formed. Bea was somewhere in the Nebelwald, where he didn't know. She wasn't alone. Watching her from the trees behind her were a handful of the animal-skulled knights of the forest's lords. They stood silent and unmoving, save for when they pressed into a nearby tree only to emerge from a trunk closer to Bea. 

——————

Bea knew she was getting closer, there were less animals around and some of the trees bore unnaturally deep claw marks in them. She unslung her bow and knocked an arrow from the quiver at her hip. There was a good chance that she would run into one of the ghouls this close to their nest. She stalked carefully, keeping to a ridge that kept her obscured from the area below. 

She moved quietly as she followed the various signs of ghoul presence. Eventually it became obvious which direction to go as her nostrils filled with a familiar scent from her past. Ghoul packs will often kill more than they need and drag the corpses into their nests to decay. The curse demands rot be devoured by them and so they make piles of viscera to facilitate that. It was that scent which came on the wind. She froze. The scent brought with it old memories.

Bea shook her head. “I’ve been to the old nest, I can handle this," she assured herself

Bea crept carefully, moving from tree to tree, checking her surroundings each time. She paused when she heard something move. Her fingers drew the arrow back as she turned towards the sound. There was nothing there. Relieved, she relaxed her draw and tried to level her breathing. She had yet to find the entrance itself and had promised herself she would not leave until she'd seen it with her own eyes. 

She continued to walk towards where the stench was coming from. The scent of rot was thick in the air and the trees here had been almost completely stripped of their bark. A careless step saw her foot crunch something beneath her heel. She lifted it and sticking out of the snow was the crushed skeleton of what she assumed to be a rabbit. Bea kept walking, her drive to find the nest overpowering her trepidation. She climbed up a small ridge and saw it, the nest.

It was like the image she and the others had seen the other day in the scrying mirror and yet it was also completely different. The stench of rotten flesh was all around and seemed to be coming from beneath the snow in places. The snow… it's melted. Surely it was just the heat from the rotting meat. Bea placed her knocked arrow back in her quiver and carefully slid down the ridge. Her feet first crunched into the remaining snow then stepped on something… else.

She looked down at the earth beneath her feet and her eyes went wide. Under her boot was a bruised looking, pink-black material. She could feel the heat of it wafting up.

“Oh gods… it’s,” she shivered. 

The ground pulsed and as she looked more carefully she saw that spreading from the cave entrance was a carpet of flesh. There was no sound here, the animals avoided the cursed place. No, that wasn’t quite right. Sticking out of the mat of tissue were small bodies, little things, what was left of forest animals that had been pulled into it. Wanting desperately to flee, but unable to get her legs to move she continued to examine the nest.

The entrance to the nest proper yawned wide. It seemed composed of gold and silver with the horrid fleshy mass sticking to it in places. There were devices that sparked and crackled with lines of glowing light leading inside. As she watched she heard a shriek issue from the entryway. It was all she needed to finally wake her legs and begin a frantic dash away from the cursed place. 

Bea’s tracks tore at the mat of flesh beneath her, kicking skin and blood into the air as she sprinted. The first shriek was joined by others as she ran. She hit the ridge and slung her bow back over her shoulder before beginning to climb. Her fingers dug into the frigid earth as she ascended the ridge, driven by abject terror. 

Only as she reached the top did she dare look back. There were so many of them, more than they had seen before in the mirror and they were not just humanoid; there were warped and twisted bears and elk, wolves and even rabbits. All of them were stretched out and slavering, their hair having fallen out in clumps. Bea suppressed the urge to scream and ran as fast as she could, leaving the hellish place behind her. 

Berthold stepped back from the scrying mirror, his stomach churning. “Dear gods.” 

He watched his sister run. Some of the smaller monstrosities tailed her. She turned as she ran, firing arrows into some of them. The wilds knights that had been shadowing her intercepted the creatures, their rusted arms biting into warped flesh. Berthold watched them get overwhelmed then shifted the mirror’s view back to Bea. She was stumbling, out of breath, but none of the creatures were near her. 

Bea put her hands on her knees and looked back towards the nest. “I-I’m alive.” Her lungs burned in her chest, her muscles cried in agony, but she was alive.

From behind the tree closest to her emerged a woman, beautiful and terrifying. She wore a pale gown that seemed to be composed of moth wings and her eyes were brilliant emeralds. The woman put a hand on Bea’s shoulder. “We need to talk,” said the Spring Maiden, Vesna.

Vesna turned to stare directly into Berthold's eyes, through the mirror. The vision went black.