Morning came without troubles. Maeve had already woken by the time Lyn reached for her shoulders. The fire burnt down, ash and weak embers remaining in its wake.
‘How do you feel?’ Lyn asked as she handed Maeve some pastries mainly made of oat.
‘I’m fine, I believe,’ Maeve shrugged. The unfamiliar feeling of easiness dimmed as she had predicted, though this time she at least did not wake from her sleep desiring to get back and never wanting to wake again. ‘Just… don’t ask me to repeat that thing.’
‘I wasn’t going to. I’m not immortal. If you absorb all the essence of my life, I will be left with a vacuous body. That’s no life, huh?’
‘Then why would I ever want to do that again?’ asked Maeve horrified to the bone.
‘If your life is at stakes, you won’t ask yourself whether it’s ethical or not.’ Lyn frowned. ‘Well. It’s you, so maybe you would in fact. Point is, don’t. These demons are not a question of ethics either way.’
‘You… expect me to fight?’
‘I gave you a tool. It’s up to you what you’ll do with that.’ Lyn stood, kicked dirt at the remnants of the fire, then turned to Maeve and shrugged. ‘I believe you’ll figure it out pretty soon.’
The knight left toward the depths of the wood. Maeve quickly tucked her blanket into her bag, gorged the pastry, and dashed after her companion; she tried drinking from the flask while rushing which resulted in tumbling in a gnarled knot of roots, then tumbling in her own trousers, splashing some of the water onto her face, but in some miraculous way she managed to keep her balance and did not fall onto her butt. Lyn pretended not to notice.
By the time the sun proclaimed noon, Maeve realised they were walking very near to the route Mindu led them through after he had found them on that side of the barrier. The journey took almost three days to reach Tusk Ridge; they seemed to complete it in less than two. She vocalised that thought.
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‘We took a shortcut yesterday,’ Lyn enlightened her. ‘It’s easier with two people than with a bunch of intruders you want to keep under vigilance.’
It was not long before they reached the green slope with the brook indicating Bryne’s barrier of faelin. Maeve was gasping hard; Lyn did not even break a sweat despite wearing her armour.
‘What… do you hope… to find?’ Maeve asked leaning on her knees each step.
‘All these questions. If I’m silent, it doesn’t mean I hate you, I simply have nothing to say. You don’t need to try to make small talks this hard.’
‘I’m…
‘Don’t you dare.’
‘… tired.’
Lyn chuckled. ‘Me too, girl. Come. We are at—’
The knight froze in place at the top of the hill. Maeve was convinced only few things could leave Lyn surprised; she exerted the last of her energies to quickly take those couple of yards left.
She should not have hurried.
The brook rumbled on the rocks undisturbed. But beyond, a horde of demons crawled.
Maeve instinctively took a step back. From left to right, wherever she looked, beasts teemed on the bank opposite. Red-clad demon soldiers, bloodwolves, and abominations she had not yet seen: creatures that could be best described as an amalgam of lizards, nighttwigs, and humans; dragons missing some of their limbs, stretching vestigial wings, tails, front legs, often rotten, holes gaping on their sides; pale, ashen skinned humanoids with uncanny, six feet long legs, and even longer arms; four-legged somethings the skin of which was naked and slimy, toad-like, bearing similarities to horses. Maeve pressed her hand to her mouth, struggling to fight the urge to vomit in the horror suffocating her. Knees trembling, she looked at Lyn, begging.
The knight sighed.
‘Worse than it was two days ago.’