***
"I did suggest that you leave your armor with the horse," Buurn smiled pulling Regis up from the river where he had fallen.
"If it were not for you, I would have been food for the lagartos." Regis huffed and puffed his way across the soggy earth shrouded beneath the mist swirling around their knees in ethereal eddies. "Smoke, there." Regis pointed toward a thin column of gray rising from the mists to the north-east. "It's not far but in this," Regis lifted his slime-covered foot from the water, "it is still too far."
"Wait." Buurn grasped Regis by the arm and pointed to an area a few yards ahead. Regis squinted, shaking his head and was about to speak when the mist reared up a yards from where he stood. "Lagarto."
Buurn grabbed Regis by the neck of his mail, leaping into the air as the immense jaws of the lagarto snapped shut on the swirling mists left by their wake.
With his heart thumping in his mouth, Regis stared wide-eyed at the ground, now twenty feet below them, gasping, "How is this possible?"
"Ssh," Buurn closed her eyes. "There is so much life here, it is confusing my senses." Slowly she sank back to the ground like a dandelion seed, landing silently on the veiled earth. "Stay behind me, the mists can make it difficult to build a clear picture of what is around us."
"How did you do that?" Regis waved his hand loosely at the sky. "I've not read anything about flying elves."
Buurn turned to face him. "Regis, there are many things about the elves that have never been written down. I am sure that you have read many books by Stefry. Who amongst you has ever seen him?"
"Yes, but..."
Buurn raised a hand silencing him.
"Stefry is known to my people, the darklings. The other elves would not have his kind in the Delvings. I trust him and allow him through our lands to aid his study. In return for this, he does not study us." She smiled and turned away, treading cautiously through the waters where Dekor encountered the fen dweller earlier.
"That does not explain what you just did!" Regis stumbled, falling forward. Buurn grasped his shoulder with one hand, lifting him onto his feet. "Or that. I've watched you these past few days. You never eat, sleep and seldom drink, yet you never tire. How is that?"
"There has been a fight here." Buurn climbed up onto the small island where Icthus had been living. The mists had rolled back to reveal the grassy mound. Kneeling down she placed her hands in the depressions in the earth. "Dekor ran to that tree." She pointed across the island keeping her eyes to the ground. A leather-clad crab scuttled in the mud. "A lagarto and a fen dweller." Buurn rose to her feet following the rhythm of the fight. "Over there, the lagarto was thrown at the tree."
"The fire still has life; it was lit with magic. There are the remains of the lagarto." Regis walked toward the carcass buried beneath a mass of heaving black feathers.
"Raark." One of the birds looked at him, its bald, leathery head smeared with viscera. Regis, his sword at the ready, backed away toward the wooden house on the shore of the lagoon. "Smells good," he said, peering into the pot hanging over the dying fire whilst keeping a wary eye on the birds.
"They were here." Buurn examined the webbed footprints by the water's edge. "A tattlejack lives here. Or at least it did."
"Did Dekor kill it?"
"No, they left together," Buurn told him, smiling as she looked out across the water.
Kneeling down at the edge of the lagoon, she stretched out her hand, submerging it into the water. Closing her eyes, she began to feel the water's energy. Calling softly to it Buurn enquired after her quarry. She could feel the reverberating life energy of everything: plants, insects, fish, lagartos. Her forehead wrinkled with concentration as she began filtering out all of the smaller life signs. "They are too far away."
Buurn stood up. Pulling the hood from her head, she turned to face Regis who was waving a small bow and a purple knife. "We must notify Magnus at once. It is most likely that, with the aid of the tattlejack, Dekor will be able to cross over Everstill River into Gamran Thorn. The trolls will not bother them there." She brushed her long, dark hair from her face revealing her porcelain features. The purple sheen of her skin shone in the morning sun as she raked her hair back behind her tall, pointed ears. Tapping her finger to her lips she thought.
"I cannot carry us across so much water. We cannot climb the cliffs and enter Oumtuk as humans have no jurisdiction there. Neither can I cast the waters aside. It is no use chasing them any further."
"It is our duty to pursue him to the borders of our territory," Regis urged, handing the bow and knife to Buurn as he stared out into the distance. The rising sun had evaporated the morning dew and drawn the aroma of the swamp up into the rich, acrid air, it.
"I cannot port us across the water. If we land in it, I cannot swim. And I doubt that you can swim too well in your armor." Buurn's eyes sparkled in the sunlight, giving them the appearance of two tiny mirrors. "We will have to return. It will take us no time to get back. You have the portal ring?” Regis took the ring from his belt. “Good, we must waste no more time."
"Agreed." Regis looked back across the lagoon, whispering to the morning, “The One be with you Dekor. You were a good friend."
Tossing the portal ring on the ground he proclaimed, "The University."
The portal shimmered open revealing a watery image of the University. Buurn hesitated, watching Regis step through the portal where he appeared waiting on the University steps for her to come through.
Chuckling to herself, "Icthus," Buurn, tossed the bow and knife into the lagoon knowing only too well who had owned them, disposing of the evidence.
After stepping through, the portal shattered behind her, its power depleted.