Night deepened. Bare mountain-peaks passed beneath me in the moonlight like rows of spears, as if daring me to fall upon them.
Instead, I fell into a mercifully-dreamless sleep. When I awoke in the predawn twilight, I found I was the last one up. Thanks to the ministrations of the twins and a gesture from Kirid, I felt like I’d had the best rest I’d ever enjoyed, despite the roughness of sleeping here sprawled out on the stone.
Beneath us, I saw the forested slopes and tilled fields of House Sentelemeth. Agormand proper. Our course should’ve taken us close to Irontooth Gates, as I’d imagined it, but I was hardly some master of geography, and I’d been hoping to spot the landmark even if only from afar, if only to set my mind at ease. Now I’d slept right through, and we were closer to home than I’d expected.
Just hours away.
“Master!”
Pinktongue returned to my shoulder in a flash of flame, staggering everyone, even me. In his pale clawed fist he held the wrist of another imp, his fellow dangling by his arm. Pinktongue grabbed hold of the neck of my robe and flapped his wings to steady himself.
“Master, it has been seen! The Bilgebreath, he has seen it!”
“It?” I took Bilgebreath from him, to both of their relief, and stared at the mint-allergic imp. “You saw the dragon?”
“Yes my Master!” he squeaked. “The tail, the tail of the dragon entering the earth, where the paladins did go!”
Even in these circumstances, he managed to fill the word with spite.
“Paladins?”
“P-paladins of Mund!”
I cast a swift glance over the nonplussed faces of the others, then barked at him:
“Well… where?”
Bilgebreath, for his part, looked at Pinktongue desperately.
I leaned aside so I could turn my head, look my messenger right in the glowing red eyes. “Where, Pinktongue?”
He licked his teeth.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Master… Master I know not the name of the place, yet it has many roofs –”
I went cold inside. They’d found Mal Malas, but didn’t know how to identify –
“– roofs clad in green and gold grasses, where it seems the ground has grown over the houses, or they have buried their homes –”
“Hidden Hedge,” I said, and he fell silent instantly, fixing me with a hesitant, toothy little grin. “Hidden Hedge!” I repeated, turning to Orcan. “It’s not far.”
He shrugged at me from over the edge of his book.
“Double our speed!” I got my bearings and pointed, angling my arm towards the curve of the mountain-range, almost directly at the rising sun.
“I can’t,” he huffed, though I felt the lurch as he adjusted the direction of our flying rock. “I am moving us at maximum speed.”
“You’ve got to have some more juice than this, come on!” I was filled with energy; the force-whips extending from my stump of a right arm were rigid, like branches caught in a hurricane-wind.
A hurricane-wind Orcan seemed incapable of producing.
He shrugged once more, and moved his eyes back to the page of his text.
Kirid looked between us, and then back to the clouds, far off in thought… but it wasn’t her I had a problem with.
“Don’t blame him,” the twins thought at me. “He’s more nervous than your imp there, believe us.”
Okay. I shrugged my shoulders, knowing what I had to do. You can keep him on track, if I go out ahead with a flight-spell on me –
“We know what you’re planning. We understand your urgency. We… won’t stop you.”
I felt the tension in that statement, and it gave me pause.
But you want to.
“We aren’t sure just how much you’ll take on board what we have to say… We aren’t sure how much it’ll help.”
I looked down at the woodlands smearing past like paint in the wake of an artist’s brush.
You’re afraid of damaging my confidence.
“Exactly.”
I smiled.
Don’t worry. You don’t go into something like this weighing up odds, figuring out your chances. You just do the right thing. Live or die, it doesn’t much matter.
“Mortiforn loves you, Kas.”
The strangeness of this statement made me blink, look back up at their faces.
Jaroan had his eyes closed, a tranquil expression on his features. It was Jaid whose gaze met my own.
“Don’t fear it. You forget that while your thoughts and deeds lend shape to Materium, every helping hand and sinful whisper echoes across the eldritch planes, sculpting the future in ways you cannot begin to dream. Your soul, Kas. It may be many things – you may be many things – but impure isn’t one of them.”
I stared at my sister for a few moments, not quite knowing what to say, or even to think.
Th-thank you.
“You’re more than welcome.”
My heart swelled in my breast, such that I thought for a moment I might die of it.
I suppose… I can wait. For the fight, I mean. I have some other things to prepare.
“Knock yourself out.”
I already had Zab and the satyrs along for the ride, plus wraith-boy of course…
A gesture summoned and ingested Blofm – I had it down to an art-form now, and Orcan, whose inquisitive glare came beaming from over the edge of the book again, bore witness only to a flash of verdant energy.
And then, throwing caution to the winds, I did the same with an ascended ancient.