When the Fear Wasn’t Theirs

[Author's note: Apologies for the delay in uploads. I was busy with school, with the semester nearing its close, for those who enjoy this story, first off, thank you dearly, secondly, you can expect more chapters soon :)

Also, as presented before, I have a bad habit with run on sentences so it takes a while to create a well written chapter but I assure you, if I may be so arrogant, the story itself should be good regardless.]

The forest was quieter than it should have been. Morning light filtered through the canopy in slow, hesitant shafts, gilding the dew and turning every leaf into a trembling mirror. Lyren hummed beside me, a half-shaped tune meant for morale, though I suspected it soothed him more than it steadied anyone else. His fingers brushed the strings with an easy confidence, and even Eryndor who was trudging ahead with the patient step of someone who measures distance by action rather than thought, seemed to relax at the sound. For a moment we were not aspiring heroes, not martyrs to Riverhelm’s whim, we were travelers on an ordinary road, and the world allowed us that small mercy.

Then the path began to sink, and the air grew heavy all around us.
The trees leaned inward, as if listening for the exact moment this mundane tread would turn into something else.

Eryndor lifted his arm, pointing toward a low ridge where the trunks thinned and the moss darkened. “There,” he said, voice steady and certain. “Past that line, that's where the Lamia’s territory begins.”

Lyren’s grin came too quickly for my mood. “Wonderful,” he declared, brushing a lock of hair aside. “I’ve been saving the perfect song for our grand entrance.”

The two of them exchanged a look I couldn’t yet translate, the kind made of rhythm, trust, and timing. A language built from shared danger and shared victories. They wore their roles like second skins.

I envied that certainty. Not just their emerging friendship, but the way it gave them shape in the world. I still scribbled away alone at the edges, always cataloguing, always trying not to let my thoughts spill over the lines of the page.

I stayed a few paces back, with my notebook closed at first, then open when I could no longer stop the world from arranging itself into notes. The forest swallowed sound. Even birds seemed to step aside, as if giving the road to us out of caution or pity. The closer we came to the cave, the more the world felt worn.

We moved downhill. The canopy thickened until mist clung to our ankles and the scent of salt threaded through the green. Lyren’s humming softened into something slow and careful, his fingers trailing the rim of his lute as he practiced a rhythm for slowing steps or easing nerves. Eryndor spoke of battle formations in short, blunt sentences. He told us where to stand, how far to push, which flank to watch. His voice shaped uncertainty into something we could face.

We had a method. Lyren would sing and slow whatever creatures may face us, Eryndor would close the distance and strike. I would call angles, mark patterns, catch the details between breaths. Though honestly I still felt like my part wasn’t needed, everything about my role was something anyone could do with just basic observation, it was nothing special. But they wouldn’t let me dim the mood with logic. Even so, anyone could figure where to strike.

Lyren hummed brighter. Eryndor laughed low. And somehow the two of them slid into a rhythm mid-conversation, the hopeful song and the heavy footstep weaving into something sharp and sure.

The Lamia arrived like a whispered rumor suddenly made real. They were more woman than monster at first glance, hair dark as midnight and slick with dew, voices soft and almost trembling. They circled without teeth bared, their smiles thin and unsteady.

One of them kept smoothing her hair back, over and over, even when the strands hadn’t moved. A nervous habit, but too mechanical. Like someone performing comfort without feeling it. Another’s tail coiled so tightly it trembled, the tip scraping shallow trenches in the mud.

“Brave ones,” one of them said, her tone meant to pull rather than push, “The path ahead is cursed. Why not come with us instead? Where there is warmth, and safety.” Despite the words being direct towards us, her eyes were focused elsewhere.

Their words were meant to tempt, but the sound beneath them wasn’t temptation. It was hesitation. No, it was fear. Their eyes kept flicking toward the cave as if waiting for something to crawl out of it. When another Lamia spoke, her voice cracked outright.

“We… we cannot leave this place. It is not safe to wander around. Please, stay with us where it’s safe.” she began to slither towards us with her arms wide, looking for an embrace. No, she slithered away from the cave.

Even so, her plea dropped between us like a stone. 

In the face of those beasts, Eryndor’s jaw tightened, but his stride didn’t break. Lyren’s fingers trembled on the strings, ready to summon a melody that could shield or stall.

“If I time the verse correctly…” Lyren murmured, “I can keep them still long enough.”
Eryndor nodded. “And I’ll break the front line. Once I do, finish your song.”

Up close they looked exhausted, not predatory. Like creatures forced into a role they never chose.

The cave mouth exhaled a cold older than the morning. The stone around it was carved with lines, spirals, symbols that wind or rain could never make. Too sharp. Too deliberate. Someone had wanted these marks to endure. Or to be found.

Eryndor and Lyren prepared for a fight, though I doubted the Lamia wanted one. Talking might solve everything. But the cave… the cave felt like a question begging for an answer. I figured I would have the time to jot a few things down so I broke away from the rest.

I stepped closer. The hairs on my arms rose. The carvings were old, much older than the villages, older than any story told by firelight. Words? Symbols? A language I didn’t understand yet, but wanted to.

I set my book on my knee.
Because this, this was a moment worth catching.

I wrote each line carefully, trying to capture shapes I didn’t yet grasp. Spirals that looped into smaller spirals, lines that ended in something like an eye. The air tasted like iron and promises made long, long ago.

The longer I studied the wall, the quieter everything behind me became. Not calm, but quiet in the way a room goes silent before something breaks. My quill scratched the page, carving the shapes into permanence. A slanted line that tapered to a point. A spiral that fed into itself. A mark like an eye watching from the stone. There was meaning here, pattern beneath pattern, like these carvings were the start of something, not the end.

But then the world snapped.

A single intake of breath, Lyren’s. A shift in gravel, Eryndor’s stance widening. The humming, the patient preparation, turned to tension so sharp it cut through the mist.

“Now,” Eryndor said.

I looked up just as he charged.

The Lamia shrieked, not in hunger, but raw fear, skittering back across the stones and pond, their tails coiling anxiously as if unsure how to defend themselves. They weren’t built for direct clashes. They moved like shadows, not soldiers. And yet my companions saw only the danger they could be, not the terror they already were.

Lyren’s voice burst outward, bright and ringing, a melody woven for restraint. It caught the air like silk. The Lamia staggered under its weight, muscles slowing in reluctant obedience.

I felt the first threads of panic twist through my ribs.

This wasn’t right.
They weren’t acting like predators.
They weren’t even looking at us.

They kept speaking of safety...

“No! Wait—stop, please just—” My voice tangled in my throat. Words came too slow for what needed to happen. I shoved my book under my arm and stepped forward without thinking, but Eryndor had already crossed half the distance. His blade lifted. One clean strike. He would end their lives before asking why it should end at all.

“Eryndor!” I shouted.

He didn’t hear me over Lyren’s song.

My heart jumped into my mouth. The symbols on the wall blurred. Every part of this was wrong. If I let this fight start, someone innocent would bleed. Logic screamed louder than fear, I needed to stop them. Even if I didn’t know how to fix everything yet, I could at least stop this.

The shadows beneath me rippled.

A cold prickle ran up my spine, like someone dragging a fingertip through the back of my thoughts. The shadows tugged, not gently, not violently, but with the insistence of a hand pulling me out of the way of something I hadn’t yet seen.

I didn’t think. My body did.

The shadow teleportation spell, simple, instinctual, caught like flint against stone. Darkness surged at my feet, swallowing the ground, curling upward like smoke. It yanked me sideways through a thin space between moments, and the world snapped back around me—

—right in front of Eryndor’s descending strike.

His eyes widened in horror, far too late to stop.

I moved before I had time to be terrified. I thrust my free hand out and grabbed the only thing within reach, fallen leaves scattered beneath the nearest tree. A surge of magic, messy and unrefined, leapt from me in a jittering crack of light.

The leaves burst upward, swirling into a tight, trembling cluster that hardened into a thin barrier. It was fragile, and unfinished, a shield made of desperation and debris.

Eryndor’s blade sliced through it in one clean strike.

The impact cracked through my bones.

The leaf-shield shattered instantly, splintering into sparks of green-gold light that dissolved as quickly as they formed, but it slowed his strike just enough for him to turn the blade sideways, embedding it into the ground instead of through my ribs.

The force flung me backwards. My book flew from my grasp, skidded across stone. I hit the ground hard enough to see stars.

“Caelen!” Lyren’s song broke off into a strangled yelp.

Eryndor ripped his sword free and was kneeling beside me in the same breath, eyes wide with a fear I had never seen in him. “By the gods, are you hurt? Caelen, look at me! Just what were you thinking?”

Lyren rushed to my other side, hair falling into his eyes, voice pitching sharply. “Darling, if you wanted to make an entrance, you could have said so instead of leaping in front of a man who swings swords like metaphors, dangerously and with too much passion!”

Behind them, the Lamia huddled together, trembling, staring at us like we were all mad.

I pushed myself upright, shaking, but alive. Just barely.

“I’m fine,” I lied, breath unsteady. “I think. Mostly. I think.”

“Mostly?!” Lyren’s voice shot an octave higher.

Eryndor planted a hand on my shoulder, grounding, steady. “Why did you do that? You nearly died.”

I opened my mouth.

Closed it again.

Because how could I explain everything all at once? The carvings, the fear in the Lamia’s voices, the way they kept glancing toward the cave as though something inside held their leash. The spirals that looked like an ancient rune. The way all of it connected, no, almost connected, in a way I couldn’t articulate fast enough.

Words tumbled out anyway.

“I—okay, so—when they spoke, their tones didn’t match the intent. Not in the usual deceptive way but in a fragmented way, like—like fear broken into politeness, and their body language didn’t match standard predatory posture either, they were angled away from us, not toward us, and the carvings—those on the cave wall—there was a sequence that looked like binding script except older, and if they’re bound, then their behavior makes sense, because anyone forced into a role would naturally avoid conflict unless driven, which they weren’t, not by instinct but by something inside that cave—”

Lyren blinked at me, mouth slightly open.

Eryndor straightened slowly, frowning as if trying to track a bird he couldn’t see.

“And,” I continued helplessly, “if they’re bound then killing them won’t solve anything because the real threat is controlling them and the symbols match pre-Riverhelm era markings, which suggests someone is using them as—well, not tools but—no, actually yes, tools, or pawns, or conduits—”

Both men stared at me.

I swallowed, heat creeping up my neck.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “That was… a lot.”

Lyren tentatively raised a hand. “Sweetheart… was any of that meant to answer why you jumped in front of Eryndor’s sword?”

I sighed. “Yes. Technically. Eventually.”

Eryndor rubbed a hand down his face.

I tried again, slower.

“What I mean is… the Lamia aren’t the enemy. They’re being used. And if we want to solve the larger problem, the cave, the carvings, the thing controlling them. We need them alive, to answer some questions.”

Their expressions softened just enough to let me breathe.

I picked up my fallen notebook, brushing dirt from its cover.

Then, more firmly, more clearly, I said:

“I have a plan. And it starts with them.”

The Lamia flinched when I gestured toward them.

But this time, they didn’t look afraid of us.

They looked confused, and relieved.

For the first time since we crossed into the Lamia’s territory, the forest seemed to breathe again, warily, like it wasn’t sure whether to fear us or thank us.The carvings on the cave wall seemed to watch as well, patient and unblinking, waiting to see what we would do next.