Kre wasn’t sure if he should be amused by Dain’s inability to say such a simple name, or if he should be afraid since he had used it repeatedly without a thought to his own personal safety.
“Is there some sort of ill luck associated with its name?” he asked his still flustered companion.
Dain took a couple of deep breaths but still could not bring himself to respond. On the other side, Kersath nudged his horse forward with a tap of his heels and a click of his tongue.
“No ill luck,” the dark Ylveryan called back. “It is more… what is the term?” He snapped his fingers after a short pause, “Ah! It is more a full-on curse.” Though Kre could not see his face, he could sense the smirk that lie there.
“That!” Dain exclaimed. He shook his head solemnly and spoke as if speaking of someone who had long since passed from this world. “Those creatures are mental leeches and tricksters. It is a slow, tragic death filled with lost memories that awaits any who meet that creature, let alone utter its name.”
Kre let that hang in the air for a bit as they both pulled their horses up to ride behind Kersath. It didn’t take long for the Ylveryan to break the awkward silence and bring the topic back up again. “How do you come to know of these creatures when they are considered mythical even to mine own people?”
‘He knows,’ Kre thought to himself. He had been trying to figure out how to explain about his own Dalklyn experience given the stigma he now knew was associated with the creature. That was even if he decided to talk about it at all. Now, since Kersath has subtly indicated that he knew Kre was hiding something, he had little choice in his admission.
“I met one,” he said, as casually as he could. “It was some time back, after… some stuff. The situation ended up with us trekking quickly through the woods late at night before finding shelter in a hole in a massive tree.”
“Translation,” Kersath said in his raspy dead-pan voice, “you were on the run and tried to lose your pursuers in an ancient, possibly enchanted part of the forest without full knowledge of the dangers of doing so.”
Dain shook his head and muttered some strange, lyrical sounding phrases under his breath. Kre assumed that it was some type of magical incantation, possibly for protection given his uncomfortableness around the topic of the Dalklyn.
“You seem to have a way with words, Kersath,” Kre said with a shrug, admitting nothing, but still acknowledging the other’s words.
“And you,” the dark-skinned Ylveryan said as he used his knees to guide his horse into a side path that only he seemed to be able to see, “are finally learning to be discrete.”
He was gone from sight before Kre could come up with a retort, leaving him alone with Dain who simply looked over at him, shaking his head sadly as if looking at a dead man.