Karimlan tried to slow down her breathing. She stood behind a huge tree trunk, soaked with mud and the Lords knew what. Her clothes stuck to her skin like a second one, stains and tears decorating it. Brown water eddied slowly around her booted knees. She was sinking deeper into the muck even as she stood as still as she could. She wouldn’t have, of course asked for any help or moved to anywhere at all. She thought that she would risk surviving the swamp floor’s deadly embrace than face the creature that lay happily purring behind the tree.

The trees in the swamp formed a certain canopy that obscured almost all traces of sunlight. It could have been midnight for all the good the lighting of the forest did her. She remained plastered to the tree root despite the fact that she felt things slither on her. She was now a part of that tree, and trees did not shake off scaled creatures crawling on them. Trees did not breathe. Trees did not talk or cry. Trees did not move unless the wind blew and there was not even a trace of that.

She had been in a myriad of situations where being completely invisible was the key to life and death. This however, takes the cake.

She was born, brought up and trained in battle. Her father was a knight and her mother a medicine woman. The first thing she had ever seen was her father in full armor because they were in the middle of a battle when her mother gave her life. Her first toys weren’t dolls or cooking units but swords and medicine kits. Her first lessons weren’t how to tend the house, or play an instrument or be a proper woman. Her first lesson was how to hack if people approached her tent when her father was out in battle. She almost smiled. Hack now ask questions later. She learned how to kill and hunt even before she learned doing her braids.

Her father had taught her well and good. He taught her to trust her instincts and right now they told her to stay very still because the monster on the other side of the tree was not something that she can survive.

She had walked in on it happily slicing... or perhaps dicing is more appropriate term, the arm of a man. A living, groaning man in pain. It sat on his middle, somehow incapacitating the man who looked like a strong hunter. The creature had the looks of a human with slight but very effective alterations. It had black eyes larger than a human’s. It wasn’t chocolate brown but the color of a moonless night. It covered most of the white of its eyeball. Next thing that caught her attention were the claws the creature had. They were long and, judging by the man’s painful cries, sharp. The creature was pale, with an almost blue tinge to the skin tone. It had long silver hair sleeked back from its face. The ears were long and pointed. It had a pair of what would seem like dragonfly wings and a tale with a very sharp end to it. It was also slightly smaller and more compact than a human. Was this what a faery looked like?

Karimlan ignored the pain on her cramping muscles. She almost jumped when the creature spoke with a surprisingly human voice. “You filthy humans. How dare you enter my woods and waste so much. You hunt for the sake of hunting and hurt even the young ones. I will also skin you alive as you have done them, I will maim you as you have them with your traps. I will, however feed you to them. I will honor your remains as you have denied the creatures you killed and left to rot. I am not as cruel as you creatures are.” the female voice all but purred. “Ready?”

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...some people are only alive because it is illegal to kill them...