Despite the thoughts crowding about in his head Etienne couldn’t help but feel a thrill pass through his body as he moved through the forest.
He wasn’t going as fast as he had when he was a monster, but now he was smaller, his limbs shorter, so he wasn’t covering as much space as he had before. Instead, he slithered along the ground, his lower half long enough and heavy enough to let his torso remain at more or less standing height as he moved along. The small tendrils on the side aided in his movements, stabilizing him in ways that a serpentine form would not normally have been able to manage. They kept him from tipping over, despite the weight difference his human form provided.
However, none of that mattered to him right then. Instead, he was focused on his freedom, the sheer joy of being able to want to go somewhere, and then being able to do it, his own body not fighting him every second. As he’d said to Adam, it was easier when he didn’t think about it, when he just let his instincts do the driving. He was slowly starting to understand how his new form was meant to move, but it would be a while before he was used to it.
Still, all of that was secondary to the main issue he was mentally working on. Should he take Adam’s offer?
Did he even deserve to? That was the question that plagued him. Etienne knew he hadn’t been in control of himself, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a murderer. That man, those hikers, even the elf girl, the one with the wings that he’d torn before he ate her. They’d been people with thoughts and feelings, just unlucky enough to cross his path when the hunger was in control. Yes, the elf girl had attacked him, tried to kill him even, but she’d been scared, desperate, and he’d eaten her alive.
They’d just been normal people, even the elf girl had been a person, and he had killed them all. Four lives on his conscience.
Did . . . did he deserve any happiness after that? It wasn’t a thought he liked, but it wasn’t one he could get rid of either.
Of course, what were his other options? It wasn’t as though he could turn himself in. This kind of situation . . . it wasn’t something the law had ever been designed to handle. He didn’t want lawyers or debate. He wanted . . .
In all truth, he knew what he wanted, he just had no idea how to get it! He wanted absolution, to no longer feel as though some terrible guilt was weighing down on him! The problem was that he had no idea how to achieve it. Rambling, almost nonsensical thoughts ran through his mind as he thought about it, notions inspired by everything from his schoolboy history lessons to comic books that he’d once read.
He thought about somehow tracking down any family the elf girl might have had and swearing his service to them as some sort of compensation like some knight in a fairy tale. He thought of going to the French government, paying for his absolution by somehow helping the country. He thought about becoming a hermit, living out here in the woods away from anyone. He even thought about becoming some sort of masked hero, after all, he had the powers, so why not? It was all just a jumble of random thoughts banging against each other as they rattled around in his head.
The young demigod turned a corner and came out of his thoughts as he realized where he was. Without meaning to he’d come back to the ruins where he’d been living these past months. He wasn’t sure why he’d come here. Maybe it was just habit, maybe some part of him wanted to see this place, now that he had control over himself. Whatever the case, he now stood before the cave-like entrance to the underground ruins.
It seemed so much larger now. Before he had been merged with a creature larger than a trio of elephants combined, now he was more human-sized again he could appreciate just how large the passageways were. Absently he moved deeper into the ruins, distracting himself from his turbulent thoughts by marvelling at his new perspective.
It wasn’t so easy though, despite the ancient architecture around him Etienne could not keep his mind from returning to what Adam had offered him again and again.
Should he go with him? On the face of it, the offer was a good deal. Adam was powerful, and he said he had allies. Etienne knew that he was on his own in this, so joining another group, no matter how small it might be, could only benefit him. Sure, he didn’t know as much as he’d like to, but it wasn’t like he was drowning in options.
The young Frenchman also had to consider the position his new appearance put him in. His new form was infinitely preferable to being slowly consumed by the monster growing from his hunger, but that didn’t change the fact that he still looked strangely alien. As he had left the clearing Etienne had tried to see if he had any sort of shapeshifting abilities, anything that would allow him to regain human form, but hadn’t been able to find anything. His powers were far more responsive now, enough so that he could feel a couple of knots of power hovering at the back of his mind.
He knew what they were by pure instinct. One of them felt like contained power, a way to give himself a surge of temporary enhanced strength, surpassing even what he already had. The other one was more nebulous, but there was a sense of ‘more’ to it, a sense of ‘bigger’, ‘louder’, ‘harder’, ‘better’. Neither power seemed to suit what he wanted, neither of them let him change or conceal what he was.
If he were to go into any town or city what was the best he could hope for? Maybe people wouldn’t attack him immediately, giving him a chance to explain that he wasn’t a monster. But even if that happened, he did not expect that he’d just be treated normally. Realistically he couldn’t expect better than kind pity, being treated as the poor freak that had rolled rock bottom when he got his powers. More likely he’d just be shunned, seen as a potential danger, a monster yet to run wild.
The most likely outcome was that he would just be attacked as soon as he was spotted. He didn’t know how things had changed while he’d been hiding in the forest, but when he’d left people had been scared. The first appearances of monsters had cost lives, in some cases entire small towns had to be abandoned. What if things had grown worse? If turned up in any sort of city or town would he have demigods coming to kill him?
For a moment Etienne wondered if they’d even be able to kill him. Before, back when he’d been a part of the monster, he’d wondered if anything could kill him. His own desperate efforts hadn’t been able to, and Adam’s frantic attacks hadn’t been able to. Now . . . now he was different, smaller, slower, maybe he was weaker? He still healed as fast, he knew it instinctively, but would that be enough in a fight?
It didn’t matter, he didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to hurt anyone.
He didn’t want to be alone anymore.
Sighing Etienne turned back to face the distant daylight entering the ruins. He’d moved in deeper than he thought he had, the brightness of the outside was surprisingly far off. He noted that the darkness didn’t bother him, he could see through it without difficulty, but it was an absent thought. He was focused on trying to understand what it was that he wanted, beyond paying for what he’d done, beyond enjoying the freedom he now possessed. What was it he wanted?
He wanted to go home. That was it, that was what he wanted at the deepest core of his heart. He wanted to go home, go back to the life he’d once thought was boring, go back to the parents that had once nagged him, the siblings that he’d been quietly jealous of. That humble, bland life, he desperately wanted it back!
But he knew that was impossible. Even if he wasn’t a monster, he was still monstrous. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but one he had to stomach. He needed to prove himself, to get himself positively into the public eye if he wanted to change that. It struck him as a slightly cold-blooded way to look at it, but he realized that if he wanted to survive as anything other than a pitied freak then he was going to have to pick his course carefully.
Slowly he began to make his way back to the mouth of the cave, his mind mulling things over.
In the end, he’d already made his decision. Going with Adam was the best choice, the only option that would let him work to redeem himself and give him a chance to one day see his family without being a burden on them. The winged demigod . . . there was something about him that made Etienne wonder if their meeting was more than just random chance. Adam had said he had people that were training him, allies that would work with him in the future. He hadn’t said much, but even that little bit spoke volumes, it said that he had backers, backers powerful enough to spare people who could train someone as powerful as the white-haired demigod.
Of course, he might be reading it all wrong, but in the end, did it really matter? Adam seemed like a decent guy. He certainly wasn’t afraid to fight, and he seemed to have understood what had happened to Etienne and not hold it against him. Adam had offered to let him join come with him, and that had to be worth something, right?
And Etienne didn’t want to be alone again.
His conviction firmed up as he made his choice. He’d go back to Adam and accept his offer. From there . . . well, he’d have to see how things went. But it couldn’t be as bad as being a prisoner to his own body, he was sure of that.
He slithered out into the light, looking up to see where the sun was. It didn’t seem to have moved far, so he couldn’t have been in the ruins that long. It shouldn’t be too hard to get back to the clearing, to meet Adam and-
“Ah, there you are. I knew you’d come back here eventually.”
The words had been in perfect French, but there had been an accent to them that he couldn’t place. It was light, but distinctive at the same time. The voice itself came from behind him and was so unexpected that he instinctively rose on his serpentine body, twisting around to face the speaker even as the smaller tendrils spread and the main two rose into a ready position.
The speaker was a young woman, in her early twenties at a guess. She was dressed oddly, wearing the bright orange overalls of a factory worker. The front was unzipped to reveal a tight tank top underneath, one that displayed an athletic build with generous cleavage. Still, it wasn’t her strange choice of clothing that was the most eye-catching thing about her. That was her hair.
Her bright emerald green hair.
At first, Etienne had thought it was an impressive dye job. This woman’s hair seemed to shine in the afternoon sun in the sort of way that most professional models would have been willing to shed blood for.
Then she’d moved, and he realised that her hair was too shiny. It was reflecting the light as though it were a mirror. The demigod blinked in surprise as he put it together. Her hair wasn’t just normal hair follicles, rather it was as though each strand was composed of incredibly flexible emerald glass. It was a beautiful sight, but in a way, it was every bit as inhuman as his own lower limbs.
Her face was pretty, the sort that he’d have expected from a young woman serving as the ‘face’ of some business for an advert. The reassuring and attractive look they wished to associate with their business. She had high cheekbones, a small nose, and vivid blue eyes. All in all, she was striking, her strange appearance making her eye-catching and memorable.
Her eyes though . . . no, more than that. The way that she was looking at him . . . it was so cold and detached, she looked bored.
“And what’s happened to you?” She asked the question but obviously expected no answer. “The scrying showed you much bigger than this, more rampant . . . Did you manage to force yourself back to stability?”
She paused for a moment, then gave a small shrug.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter. You’ll work just fine either way.”
There was nothing overtly threatening about her. She didn’t glare, she didn’t tense up, she didn’t go for a weapon. But something changed about her, something that screamed at Etienne. One moment she was an oddly out-of-place figure, the next she was a threat, a predator, a danger. All his instincts yelled at him to either flee or attack, but not to just stand there.
The Frenchman chose to run. Whoever this was he didn’t want to hurt her, not now that he had control. Maybe she was a threat, but he’d be happy to just get away. He didn’t want to fight, not yet, not when he didn’t know what the stakes were or how it affected him. He felt his muscles bunch, his new appendages getting ready to propel him backwards, away from this strange and scary woman. If he was fast then he could lose her in the trees, get back to Adam, and-
“Oh no, none of that.”
She spoke as though addressing a disobedient child, and all she did was hold up one hand as though to chide him, but in the instant she did so Etienne felt every muscle in his body suddenly lock up. He couldn’t move, not a finger, not a tendril, not even an eyelid! He just stood there, as still as if he had just been turned into stone!
And he screamed!
Inside his own flesh, a prisoner again in his own body, he screamed and thrashed, and railed against whatever was holding him. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, forcing the blood through his veins, trying to grant him greater strength. He strained, trying to break free, trying to move, trying to be free!
A momentary look of surprise flitted across the woman’s face, followed by mild irritation and then an expression of minor concentration.
“Oh? Ah . . . ah, that was surprising,” For the first time she looked at the demigod before her as though she was seeing him, rather than seeing some minor task she had to fulfil. “Not bad. Not bad at all. I can see why I was sent to get you. You will be useful.”
Get him? She was here to take him somewhere? Etienne’s mind flashed back to things he’d read on the internet, some of the rumours that had prompted him to run when he had. There’s been talk on the forums he’d been a part of about demigods disappearing, there one day and gone the next. Some people said that they got targeted by monsters, or that they ran away to try and make it big, or to go on adventures, or to find their divine source. But one rumour that had persisted, despite being disparaged and ridiculed, was about some organization that was hunting for demigods before they got known.
When the young demigod had begun to visibly mutate those rumours had scared him, and made him wonder if he might be kidnapped as well, given what was happening to him. Was he one of those ‘failed’ demigods that were being quietly disposed of? Or was he turning into a monster t be exploited? So, he’d run, run and hidden in the woods.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Now . . . was that what this woman was here for? He was trapped, he was not in control, he was going to be taken!
Again, he struggled, and again the only result was a momentary frown on the woman’s face. Nothing, that was what he was achieving, nothing! He wasn’t strong enough! He wasn’t powerful enough! Without thinking about it, Etienne reached out the knots of power in his mind. Maybe one of them could do something! They made him stronger, right? So maybe that could-
“Ah ah ah.” Again, the young woman spoke, addressing him as though she were scolding a child who had tried to grab sweets that were meant for later. “None of that now. I don’t want things to get messy, after all.”
It felt as though a hand of ice had suddenly clamped down over his entire mind! He could feel his thoughts freeze, still there, still conscious, but trapped, unable to reach out further, unable to act.
“Come on now, it’s time to get you back to your new home.”
The sensation that followed those words was entirely tangible. He could feel the wind pick up behind him, hear the strange electrical snap of arcing lightning, and see the flashes of light from behind him. He didn’t know what it was, but he could guess that it was some sort of portal or tunnel opening up. Something to take him away, to make him disappear!
Again, he struggled, struggled against the hold on his mind, struggled against the hold on his body! He tried to call on his anger, the anger that had given him those bursts of strength in his fight with Adam. He tried to use the unfamiliar muscles in his new limbs, he tried everything he could think of! Everything!
For a moment, just one moment, he thought he could feel his fingers move, felt his arm tremble. Hope shot through him and he focused in on it, trying to push more, to break through, to-
“Alright, that’s enough!” Again, her voice cut into his thoughts, just as the smothering feeling of power settled down on both his body and his mind. “Holding you like that is more trouble than it's worth. Why don’t you take a nap while we get you transported and processed, okay?”
Despite the almost friendly tone of her voice, there was nothing gentle or polite about the suffocating pressure that suddenly pressed down on his mind. Before he’d felt as though he was trapped under heavy blankets, but now he felt as though he were being buried alive. The thick cloying power rolled over him, and try as he might, he couldn’t fight back. He felt like a mammoth that had fallen in a tar pit, helpless, his strength useless.
As the darkness started to creep in at the edges of his vision, he felt his sluggish thoughts turn towards Adam again. Would he be alright? Would this woman try to capture him as well? Even as the world dimmed, he saw her move past him, toward the . . . whatever it was behind him. Was she going through? Did that mean she was only here for him? Was Adam safe?
The world spun, even as it darkened, and Etienne could feel himself falling into oblivion. His last thought, before the darkness took him, was to wish that he’d just accepted Adam’s offer back in that clearing. Why had he had to think about it? why couldn’t he have just accepted?
It would have been nice, to have a friend again, to have someone he could trust.
It would have been fun . . .
It would have been . . .
Then, there was only darkness.
--------------------------------------------------------
I glanced down at my watch and was bemused at how well it had managed to hold up through this entire mess. That arm it was on was healing up from being both beaten and cut up, and the sleeve was both torn and bloody. But somehow, the watch had managed to make it through without anything worse than a couple of minor scratches on the strap.
On the digital display, I could see the seconds inexorably marching by. It had already been more than an hour, but there was no sign of Etienne. I was more than prepared to wait for the full two hours, but as more time passed me by the more I suspected that he wouldn’t be coming back.
I knew that trying to clean myself was a losing battle, but I still wanted to do something. As things stood my clothes were a write-off, torn and stained to the point of uselessness, and the rest of me wasn’t much better. I could feel the drying mud and blood on my skin, and in my hair, I could even taste it in my mouth.
I was sore, and I was tired, but I was still able to muster up enough power to draw some relatively clean water together. Maybe cleaning off my face and hands wasn’t much, but it made me feel better.
My magic channels still burned like exhausted muscles, but even so, I was able to use a thin trickle of power without hurting them. Enough power to move a few rocks together into a ring. Enough to make finding some decently dry twigs and branches and piling them between the rocks an easy task. Enough to ignite the small pile and start a campfire.
Soon enough I was able to telekinetically drag over a log I could use as a bench while I let the campfire’s warmth soothe my tired body.
I stayed there, letting the heat of the campfire pervade me as I felt my power working to heal me. It was an odd sensation, one that I hadn’t had much chance to experience before. Any injuries I’d received during training had been quickly healed by Joan, so no time or energy would be wasted, but now I could feel it as my magic ran through me, concentrating at the points I was most injured, relieving pain and mending damage.
My eyes closed as my attention turned inwards, focusing in on where my magic and my chi were concentrating themselves. I felt them both rushing to my head, interacting with the etheric connections between my brain and my halo. To start with, those connections seemed to be inflamed and raw, but soon I felt the pain recede as they settled down.
The pain didn’t go away completely, but I felt better than before. That was the way it was working across my entire body. My spine, my arm, my ribs, my wing, all of them recovered, enough to be fully functional, but not enough to feel completely normal.
After just over an hour I felt the flows of power beginning to settle down, the concentrations of my internal energies falling back to ‘background’ levels. I came back to myself, surprised at how time seemed to have just flown by as I concentrated on my inner workings.
But now, with no distractions left, I found my mind turning to a more disturbing topic.
I’d just had a fight. A real one, not just some training spar, one where my foe had been doing their best to kill and eat me. This hadn’t been like the assault by the twisted animals, that had been more akin to extermination than it had been a real conflict. Or at least it had been once I got myself ready. Going against Etienne’s monster had been . . . terrifying.
After I was grounded I hadn’t really had time to be too scared, not once I’d lost all control over the fight. My plan had failed, I’d been caught on the ground, and all I could do was fight or die, I hadn’t been able to spare any attention to realize how frightened I’d been.
Now I could feel the enormity of what I’d gone through starting to bear down on me. Almost against my will, I could see the fight being replayed in my mind, and I could see just how lucky I’d been. So many things could have gone wrong, just one mistake, just one hesitation, just one moment slower to react, and I would have been dead.
I could see how it could have gone with disturbing clarity. I could see where I would have been torn apart, where I would have been impaled on claws and talons, where I would have been dragged screaming into that maw and devoured. I felt my body shake in a way that had nothing to do with the cold as I fully understood how close I’d come to dying out here.
Hell, I should have been dead. If it hadn’t been for that weird surge of power from my halo, then I would have been. With my normal power, I would have easily been overwhelmed while stuck on the ground. But then I’d been stronger, able to use magic I’d only imagined before.
Like a drowning man finding a floating branch, I seized that idea, trying to drag my thoughts away from how close I came to my death.
Where had that surge of power come from? Well, I knew where it had come from, as I recalled how the halo had begun to hum, to let out a clear note like a bell that had just been struck, and then I’d just been . . . stronger. However, I didn’t know why it had happened, or where it came from. Joan had told me that, eventually, I’d be able to use the halo as a means to increase my magical strength, but so far it had been more of a limiter to keep me from pushing myself too much
Joan had also told me that the halo served as training wheels, helping me learn to use my magic even as it restrained me. It was meant to keep me from using more power than I could handle, keep me from accidently frying myself if I tried to channel too much energy. But . . . hadn’t that weird note started when my wing was broken? Had it been reacting to that, letting me have access to more power because I was in more danger?
I wasn’t sure. If it did then that spoke to a certain level of intelligence, enough to make a judgement call on the situation. Or . . . maybe I was overthinking it. Could it just be something like a pre-set reaction to something happening? My halo letting me have access to more power when certain conditions were met?
There wasn’t any way for me to be sure, but I was going to have to ask Joan about it when I returned to the farmstead. Just one more thing to add to my growing list.
I had to ask her about my halo, about the power it had given me. I also had to ask about the woods, and if the corruption would end now that the source had been removed. Then I had to talk to her about Typhon and find out if we had to worry about any other demigods suffering a similar fate to Etienne.
And then there was Etienne himself. Would she agree that he was ‘cured’? Would she think he was a future threat waiting to happen? Even if she didn’t, would she accept him if he came with me? Or would she consider him tainted by what had happened, or by his ancestry? Even his actions while under the influence of his own corruption might make her want to turn him away, and I would understand that.
I shifted about uneasily. Joan was protective of me, as was her duty, so finding out how close he’d come to killing me might not sit well with her. On top of that were my own feelings, which seemed to be growing more complicated the more time I gave them to settle.
For one thing, Etienne had tried to kill me. I understood that it hadn’t really been him, but that was on an intellectual level. On a more emotional level, the memory of his monstrous form coming at me was seared into my mind. I wasn’t scared of Etienne himself, not now that he was in control, but just seeing him brought up that unsettling memory, making his presence . . . somehow uncomfortable.
On the other hand, he was the first other demigod I’d ever met, and . . . well, I didn’t want to be alone. Both Joan and Hadriel were great, but I couldn’t quite think of either of them as peers, as people I was completely comfortable with.
Having Etienne around would mean someone else that was in the same boat, or at least on the same level. We’d both be demigods, both new to the greater supernatural world, both finding our feet. Maybe we could help each other cope. Maybe . . . we could be friends.
Glancing at my watch I noted that an hour and a half had passed since the French demigod had left. Would he be back soon? To distract myself from going down another spiral of thoughts I started to drift around the clearing, seeing if there was anything that might be interesting.
I wasn’t sure what it was that drew my attention to the spot where Etienne had pulled himself out of the brambles. I must have floated by it a couple of times already by then, and nothing about it had struck me before. By that point, I’d picked up a couple of sticks and had a vague idea of trying to carve them into spears, just to see if I could, when something caught my attention from the hole in the carpet of thorned vines.
Maybe it was a glint of light on something shiny as the clouds moved across the sun. Maybe it was a brief hint of magic at the edge of my senses. Maybe it was just a random whim that made me look there. Whatever it was I glanced down at the hole as I floated over it and noticed something that didn’t belong there.
Reaching out with my arcana I pulled at the sides of the hole, widening it until the light of the lowering sun could reach in. I’d thought that there was something left over of the monster that had grown from Etienne. The monster that he was now free of. I’d thought that the body would be there like a deflated balloon, or maybe the cast-off skin of a snake. I’d even thought that there might be some sort of slime there, the decomposed remains of all that excess flesh. Instead, all I found was sand.
Sand, that was a dark colour. Sand that had a strange scent to it. Sand that was made up of many fine and smooth granules. Granules that were more fragile than sand though, breaking down into powder when I rubbed them between my fingers. There were a lot of them though, enough to leave the ground beneath the vines covered in them, the water soaking into them making the lower portion a damp slurry.
I would have turned away after a brief investigation, but I saw something poking out of the dark sand, something that had a metallic shine to it. Mildly interested I reached out with my TK again and tried to pick it up.
‘Try’ was the operative word, because as soon as my arcana made contact the magic fell apart in a way that was growing unpleasantly familiar to me. Magic resistance! Whatever this thing was it had magic resistance!
That immediately put me on guard. After all, the last thing I’d encountered with magic resistance had been Etienne’s monstrous side, and it had come all too close to eating me. The fact that I was finding this thing in the exact spot where that creature had fallen was not doing much to dispel that fear.
I hovered in place, my sore body tense as I waited to see if there would be any sort of reaction to my attempt, but nothing happened. The object just sat there as I waited, doing absolutely nothing.
I wasn’t too sure what to do. On the one hand, anything that could cause my most advanced magic to fall apart on contact was something I wanted to investigate. If only so I could learn to recognize it in the future. On the other hand, the paranoid part of me worried that it might be some sort of a lure for a trap, that I’d reach in there to grab it, and then something would grab me.
So, I decided to use a tried and true technique native to all cultures around the world.
I poked it with a stick.
Much to my surprise slavering mouths filled with rotten teeth failed to surge out of the sand to bite down on the branch I was using. What I did manage was to dislodge the object from the pile of sand it had been sitting in, enough so that I finally got a good look at it.
It was about the size of a small apple, and irregularly shaped. It was rounded, but not completely so, rather it was misshapen. The word ‘lump’ seemed to describe it quite nicely, but it wasn’t its shape that was of interest to me. Instead, I found myself intrigued by what it was made of, a distinctly metallic-looking substance, but one with an interesting sheen to it.
Deciding that I might have been erring on the side of paranoia, but still trying to play it safe, I reached out with one wingtip and flicked the metallic lump out of the hole and to the side. The small hunk of metal bounced once, then settled into a clump of brambles. Nothing happened, and after waiting a few seconds, just to be sure, I floated over to it and carefully touched it with two fingers. I’d been worried that touching something that dispelled magic might do something to my flight, maybe cancel it or something. But when again nothing happened I decided to pick it up.
The lump was heavy, enough that it made me think of lead. The surface was shiny though, and the lump almost seemed to be polished, given how smooth it was. In colour, the metal was dark, almost black, but there were hints of colour to it, hues that swam in the darkness and only appeared when the light hit the right angle. From one angle it would be blue, from another red, and from yet another, there’d be a hint of purple. More than that there seemed to be a pattern to the metal, a wave-like appearance that made me think of the edge of a katana I’d seen in films.
There was something oddly fascinating about it, and watching the light play across it, shifting its colour and making the waves dance, served to fill most of my remaining time.
I watched the last few minutes tick down to the agreed two hours, but there was no sign of Etienne.
Then I waited a further ten minutes, just to see if he would arrive late, but still there was nothing.
So, I waited for another twenty, a faint anxiety growing in my heart. Still, there was no sign of him, no sounds out in the woods, no call saying he was coming.
Still, I didn’t want to leave, not yet. So, I waited longer, my frustration growing as time passed. I could understand if Etienne didn’t want to leave, if he felt he had to stay here until he felt ready, but couldn’t he at least have said it to my face?
In the end, I put the metal back on the ground and took to the skies, my body aching but able to fly easily enough. I flew in ever-widening circles around the clearing, trying to peer between the branches to see if I could spot Etienne’s pale form. I shouted, trying to see if I could get a response, but there was nothing, no reply, no fleeting glimpse of him. Nothing.
Feeling disappointed I landed back in the clearing in order to put the lump of metal into my pocket. I was taking it with me, but at that moment it wasn’t what I was really thinking about.
I’d been ready for Etienne to refuse to come with me, but this thing with him not even coming back . . . it was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. It felt unsatisfying, as though things hadn’t ended properly between us.
Still, there wasn’t really much I could do about it. I couldn’t find him, and the link that had connected me and Etienne seemed to have disconnected. It was still there, at least on my end, but it wanted reaching anything on the other end. Maybe Etienne was out of its range, or he’d worked out some way to turn it off so I couldn’t reach him. it didn’t really matter
Working out which way led back to the Sanctuary wasn’t hard. Even though it was distant I could still feel the energies of the huge spell that concealed the farmstead. To anyone else they would have been unnoticeable, of that I was sure. But I’d been living inside it for the better part of a month, I’d become somewhat attuned to it, so it seemed to almost call to me.
Turning that way, I waited for just one more minute, just to see if Etienne would make a last-minute appearance, but soon I began to fly towards the distant power. I wasn’t going as fast as I had earlier in the day, I was so tired. It would now probably take me an extra hour or so to get back, but that’d be fine.