DotW - Valda's Request

Valda has called for you.

The words had frightened Moth so much that she couldn’t quite remember who had spoken them. Valda… asked for Moth? Her specifically? By name? It had sent a tremble quivering down her spine unlike anything else had felt before. Why? What did Valda want of her? The mild Witch Doctor had successfully evaded the spirit’s attention since the moment her four tiny paws landed in Fellfang, despite how deeply her own son had been woven into Valda’s inner web.

As the faceless messenger had urged her forward, Moth had quickly been consumed by her own thoughts. She followed the wolf she couldn’t recall with the urgency that was required, but looking back, she didn’t remember ever making the choice to walk. All she could remember were the thoughts… why her? Was she in trouble?

Was Misha in trouble?

Her eyelids drew close in a squint as she adjusted, from the bright Spring sunlight to the gloomy turquoise glow of Starheim. Her paws traced familiar paths, but soon enough, her guide had veered her off the familiar trails and pushed her deeper into the cave. She had never been so far into Starheim before - her eyes almost stung as she blinked, trying to attune to the inky darkness. Through the passages, the glowing funghi became sparse, occasionally plunging the travellers into total darkness for a matter of seconds.

By the time the ground began to level out, her ankles were trembling. A cavern opened before her, and suddenly the world was illuminated in frightening shades of cerulean, so startling that she tried to step back into the darkness of the tunnels. The solid shape of her guide blocked her passage, forcing her back into the light.

She stood for what felt like a decade before a dark figure began to form somewhere beyond the light. Was that… Fable? She took a tentative step forwards, a long lost hopefulness bringing confidence to her chest, squinting into the cavern as the figure slowly came into focus.

Valda.

Moth’s ears turned back at the sight of the fox. Slowly and tentative she lowered her head. Behind her, she could hear the wolf who had delivered her slink away into the tunnels once more, dismissed with a silent signal from the spirit. Spirit… was she? Moth had been struck with doubt from the first moment Valda had visited Fellfang. Fable trusted her. Misha believed in her. But so many others among the Skuld doubted her… believed she was flesh and blood, just as they were.

Any confidence she’d begun to muster drained from her the moment Valda flashed her almost feline smile, tiny fangs glinting.

“My dear,” She purred, the same soothing voice with which a wolf might hush her worried pups. “Thank you for coming here.”

It seemed an odd choice of words, when her presence had been demanded, but Moth did not flinch. “Is… there something you need?”

The fox sauntered closer, her sharp eyes surveying her audience. “No, not at all - I have need for nothing. It is Jarl Fable who requests a… favour of you.”

Her head lifted then, and the burning embers in her eyes began to silently glow as she met the spirit’s eyes. They seemed.. So real.. So earthly. Her breath caught in her throat, so briefly, as the glimmer of hope found her once more.

“Jarl Fable?” She echoed.

Valda nodded slowly, her smirk fading to a look of deadly urgency. “His efforts to communicate with the spirit realm have almost come to fruition. It is a critical time, and I must not leave his side. Unguided in the spiritual planes, the Jarl would be in grave danger.”

Her tail flicked, curling around her like the coil of a snake - but any comparison went unnoticed by the little wolf, who wished only to serve her Jarl. The Jarl who had shown her naught but compassion and honesty. She trusted him. She had to trust him, even though her legs still trembled with the heavy weight of her doubt.

Valda knew this, as she continued to speak.

“The Jarl requires certain flora to help him reach these higher planes. He promised that I could trust you above all others, to retrieve them for him, and return them here urgently.”

Moth only nodded, watching in silence as the fox drew ever closer, imbued by the bravery that her time untouched in Fellfang had given her. Even if she did not trust Valda, had not decided once and for all if she were of this earth or somewhere else, she knew better than to refuse a direct order. She was not like her friends, or her peers; to fight, to resist… it was not in her nature. Valda offered an opportunity to help her Jarl, and Moth would try to take the chance.

For Fable. For Fellfang.

“Linden. Jimsonweed. Shanin.” Valda reeled off her list, and to anyone unfamiliar with plants and herbs, it might have sounded like an imaginary language. But Moth knew them, some better than others… Jimsonweed and Shanin were not things they typically kept in their stores. These were much rarer, stranger plants. Valda’s knowledge of them seemed to ignite one more flicker of affirmation that she truly was a spiritual being. How could a simple fox know of these plants, plants that many wolves knew nothing of?

Moth nodded again. “I will find them,” She confirmed, her voice still quite but with far less of a tremble.

“Good,” Came the purring reply. There was a breath of silence, and Moth thought she saw the steely glint of fangs once more in the darkness.

“Go quickly now. Fable needs you, Maya.”

The wolf froze. Her pupils shrank in fear.

This could not be.

There was no way… unless...

“How do you -”

The fox laughed, her teeth sharp but her eyes sharper still.

“I am Valda. There is nothing I do not see.”

With that she was gone, and a wolf returned to Moth’s side to usher her from the cavern. And the Witch Doctor, for the briefest moment, was almost convinced that the fox truly was the spirit she claimed to be. For there was no other way she could have known… the little wolf’s true name.