Driven By Instinct

8 - Unintended

When they awoke with the sunrise, Constantine and Vica gained an unexpected companion. It flitted in and out of view, darting away to hide behind the trees that made up the forest line. It peered out at them with luminous eyes that shone even in broad daylight, and Vica made gestures of goodwill and friendship to the creature. She offered it one of the biscuits that Morra had stowed in one of the pockets of her satchel, leaving it at the base of the tree she knew it was hiding behind before backing away again.

"A dryad," Vica explained to Constantine, unprompted. He glanced at her. Her voice sounded neutral and almost indifferent, maybe a little nervous - but her magical resonance told a different story. Spikes of anticipation, excitement, and not a little happiness betrayed her. "Wood nymphs don't often show themselves at the edge like this. She's very young."

Constantine shouldered his pack. "I'm not concerned as long as it doesn't get in the way. We'll be moving around the woods here until we get to a path. There's one that will take us to Winding Oaks, and then from Winding Oaks we'll take a road that leads to Aventon."

Vica didn't seem to be paying attention, still enraptured by the presence of the dryad. The thing had cautiously revealed itself now, lurking next to the tree instead of behind it. It ignored the biscuit and seemed to be paying close attention to the mage instead.

Constantine narrowed his eyes. Something didn't feel right, but he didn't know if that was just his mistrust of things unfamiliar or if it was from some hint of danger that he hadn't yet consciously registered. Better safe than sorry, he decided, and moved behind Vica. The dryad immediately retreated.

"Stop that!" she snapped, but she kept her voice low. "She's not going to do anything. She's just curious." Vica resumed making strange gestures at the nymph that Constantine now understood to be some kind of sign language. Were wood nymphs mute? He had never seen a wood nymph before, but he had seen plenty of water nymphs in his travels. Some naiads even inhabited public fountains if the residents were amenable to their presence, and they were all more talkative than Constantine cared to tolerate. Sirens were the worst, but he supposed they were discomfited when they ran into someone like him who could resist their hypnotic voices. Too playful by half, they tended to pursue their targets with a stubbornness that often got them aggressively chased off, or injured as was the case with him.

"I don't have time for you to make friends," he told Vica. He turned and began walking along the edge of the woods. "Fall too far back and I'll carry you. I'd like that."

The threat seemed enough to finally persuade Vica to get a move on, but her pace quickened and slowed unevenly as she continued to cast glances over her shoulder. The dryad was still following them, gracefully slipping from tree to tree and peering down at them from the overhanging branches. This carried on for nearly an hour until Constantine heard a quiet chirp; he turned and eyed the wood nymph with a lowered brow. That was no bird. So the nymph could make sounds - maybe it just couldn't speak?

He turned his attention to Vica, noting the high color in her cheeks. She made more gestures at the nymph, and Constantine suddenly realized that it was making signs back. Long, spindly, twig-like fingers flew and intertwined with inhuman suppleness. More chirping, too. Constantine turned to look forward again, but his eyes were set sharper than usual. Nature spirits could prove troublesome, and he doubted dryads were any exception. Particularly this one, since it seemed so attracted to Vica.

Steadily over the next hour, the chirping grew in frequency. A man less familiar with the sounds of nature might have mistaken it for normal morning birdcalls. So dryads didn't commonly speak human dialects, or at least this one didn't, Constantine determined more certainly this time.

It was when the chirping abruptly stopped that he became alert again. Unexpected changes bode ill far too often for him to risk indifference. He glanced back, searching out the nymph's shape in the leaves to make sure it wasn't up to something mischievous - and saw it reaching down instead from a bowed overhanging branch towards Vica. The mage for her part was also reaching up, her fingertips mere inches away from the creature's own.

Constantine moved with a speed that he had yet to reveal before Vica, moving back and grabbing her by the forearm so swiftly that she didn't even have time to scream. He wrenched her away, nearly sending her to the ground, and took hold of the dryad's delicate wrist in his other hand. In the next second, he had pulled the nymph off of the branch and thrown her to the ground, his hand still grasping it with a cruel strength.

Its shriek did nothing to dissuade him, and even when the dryad scrabbled frantically at his hand in an attempt to pry him off, Constantine only continued to stare impassively down at her with a wild glint in his eyes. Its screams sounded like the crunch of fallen leaves, he noted dispassionately, but he was more interested in how its slender, long feet seemed to be browning at their tips. Quite rapidly, too.

A sudden blow to his chest did nothing to budge him, and Constantine craned his neck to easily avoid Vica's next punch. He was still holding onto her other forearm and keeping it still, but with her unrestrained hand, she was suddenly attacking any part of him that she could reach. He calmly straightened his elbow so that he was holding her at arm's length, and she was forced to give up on trying to reach his body. She rained her fury on his arm instead, as it was the only part of him that she could reach with her fists.

"Let her go!" Vica screamed, and the sheer hatred and panic in her voice succeeded where her physical attacks had not: Constantine in his surprise weakened the grip on the dryad's wrist and nearly let it slip away. He resecured his grip on the creature's arm; its strength had already been weak by human standards and was only fading with every second. Holding it still presented no difficulties.

Vica was a different story. She kicked at him now, and when that failed to move him, she dropped her weight by bending her legs, forcing him to lift her entire body if he wanted to stay upright. But still he held on - effortlessly.  By now, he was ignoring the weeping dryad entirely and staring at Vica instead in great interest.

The mage seemed to have lost all ability to speak, enraged snarls leaving her mouth instead of words. It was only when she bent down and latched onto Constantine's arm with bared teeth that he finally reacted - he released the wood nymph and dug his newly unoccupied forefinger and thumb into either side of Vica's jaw. She barely seemed to register the pain that should have almost paralyzed her, still clawing at him with one hand, but the hinge of her jaw gave in to the pressure and her teeth fell away from his forearm.

Despite the pain she should have been feeling, she seemed shocked instead that she was no longer biting him, and redoubled her efforts to do so again. Constantine released her jaw for an instant and dextrously brought her wrists behind her back; he transferred his hold so that he could hold them, crossed, in one hand. With the other, he yanked her head back by her hair so that she could only gnash her teeth, finding no purchase.

He held her like that for a long moment, waiting until her fierce struggle died and faded into a hateful glare and broken panting.

"Vica?" he said suddenly. His eyes flickered from her yet half-crazed eyes down to the bitter snarl curling her lips. "Vica."

She didn't respond. Her pupils were blown, but more concerningly, there was a bloodshot quality to the whites of her eyes that hadn't been there just a moment ago.

Constantine could recognize when he had a tiger by the tail. He wasn't worried about what she could do to him - he could knock her out with a single blow if it came to it - but rather her state of mind. Her power, perpetually rolling and flowing under his anti-magic, was no longer recognizable. It was almost as if he had only ever seen the skin of her magic, and now its true substance had burst forth and broken it, flowing and seizing and stabbing out in every direction.

Was this what he had sensed? Beneath the docile, nurturing exterior, was this what Vica was truly like? With her manners and her abominably naive ethics aside, he saw nothing gentle in her eyes now. Neither in her magic.

"I'm going to let you go," he said calmly, soothingly, as if he were speaking to a frightened animal. "Vica, tell me if you understand what I'm saying."

Still she said nothing. Her chest heaved in fierce pants as she stared up into his eyes with near-blind fury.

Constantine paused. There was no talking reason to her. For whatever reason, his interaction with the dryad had set her off in a way he never dreamed he could. Despite the part of him that delighted in seeing such intensity and life in her eyes, despite the part of him that knew he had been prodding her relentlessly to garner a reaction like this all along - a heavy unease settled in his stomach.

Something was very wrong with Vica.