Chapter Seventy

The Tongue of the Skies

Michael wanted to shout out that he was tired of running, but it would’ve taken too much effort. Additionally, he thought that if he actually said those words aloud, it’d be the same as daring the world to make an example of him. Michael knew the thought was ridiculous, but when his foot snagged on a root a moment later, it felt personal.

“I hate being a god-damned apple!” he shouted.

“Better than gravel!” Oliver grabbed him by the shoulder and they sprinted into a thicker crowd of trees.

Screeching like warping metal, dark creatures swooped down from the treetops, swiping at the boys with enormous, hook-ended tails and talon-covered wings.

Michael hadn’t had the chance to see one properly before they started running, but from what he could tell, they were spine-backed monsters with horned heads and no legs to speak of. Their wings were leathery and dark, like bats, and their claws were razor sharp.

Oliver grabbed Michael and pulled him aside, whipping his sword out behind him as a creature came tearing down, ripping clean through it in a plume of dust.

“What in Enthall are these things?” Michael yelled, grabbing Oliver and ducking to the forest floor as two more came screeching overhead.

“They’re called Auderah! They’re a kind of wyvern!”

Michael knew it wasn’t the right thing to prioritse but he asked, “Aw-dora?”

“Spot on!”

Michael turned and cracked one in the head with the metal of his bow, sending it dazed to the soil. “Good to know.” His mouth fell open in horror as a dark cloud of the monsters began descending from above in a hailstorm of screeches. “How do we fight them?”

Oliver grabbed his shirt and yelled, “We don’t!”

Veins ripped through Oliver’s hands and shot into Michael’s neck as Oliver tackled him to the ground. They erupted in a curtain of darkness. The plague of beasts roared above them, flapping and screeching as they tore at the nearby trees.

Lying hidden on the ground, Oliver writhed in pain as he maintained their cloak of concealment and Michael’s own Arcancy came alive beneath his skin, reinforcing the warrior’s power.

Michael shuffled on the carpet of red leaves, feeling twigs and stones digging into his forearms as he whispered, “What are we going to do? If these things are in the forest at sundown, they’ll butcher the magic, right?”

Oliver grimaced through the pain. “Well, there’s got to be at least fifty of the bastards, so we don’t have the equipment to deal with them. We could lure them out of the forest?”

Michael frowned as the screeching grew louder and the swarm of monsters swept through the area in rage. “Then what?”

Oliver winced as pain flushed through his chest. “Does your Arcancy do damage?”

Michael thought about it. He felt wrong saying ‘it burned’, even though it was light. He knew that much about it. “It hurts Creations if I want it to. Why? What are you thinking?”

Oliver shrugged and shook his head, a dark realisation in his mind. He grabbed his sword with his free hand and pushed himself up to his knees. “Never mind. We’ve got about an hour until sundown, by the looks of it.”

Michael frowned and realised he was right. The sun was sinking faster than he could’ve believed. “I forgot it was nearly winter.”

“The days are growing shorter. Look, I’ll draw them out of the woods. You find the others and maybe we can beat them back together until Sundown.” He finished his sentence then curled over as a flair of agony seethed between his teeth.

Michael looked at his friend, doubled over in pain and shook his head. “There’s too many of them.”

Oliver sheathed his sword and looked desperately to Michael. “I’ll be fine. I’ll bait them from the trees and vanish until you all get here. We don’t have much time.”

“Swear to me you’ll be okay.”

Oliver breathed slowly and finally nodded. “I’ll live.” He felt a drop of blood trickled from the corner of his eye and he sighed. “You ready?”

“Rearing,” Michael chuckled weakly.

“Hug the ground, wait for me to go, and then run as fast as you can. Good luck.”

Oliver’s veins were swelling around his eyes and forehead as he took his last deep breath and let out a small nervous laugh. Then without so much as a pat on the back, he let go of Michael’s hand and began sprinting like his heels were on fire, tearing beneath the plague of Auderah as he yelled, “Oh, we’re not finished yet boys! Up an’ at ‘em!”

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The swarm screeched and gave chase and Michael said an earnest prayer, but he wasn’t sure who to.

*****

James and Carter ambled back into the clearing the half-hour before sundown. There they found Nichole, Aroha, and Raeken already waiting, looking bored, hungry and tired.

Carter waved and said, “Nothing exciting on your end?”

Nichole shook her head. They’d wandered until they found the eastern edge of the forest, only to see little more than unending flatlands, as far as the horizon. She then muttered, “Oh, we think there might be an Imperial Highway about ten or fifteen leagues from here.”

Aroha nodded, sitting in the leaves, tearing up the crinkled and dry foliage. “By the looks of it, though, we’re in Groria or Fordonn. I don’t think anywhere else in the Empire is this flat. And if we’re lucky enough to be in Groria, then it would still take us eight days at least to get back... if we wanted food or rest, that is.”

James sighed, looking to the tall trees above, beginning to expire and turn grey before their very eyes. He shuffled nervously closer to the middle of the clearing and said, “Well, we left on the morning of the Eleventh, and it’s the Thirteenth of Bronzing, today. Nikereus is coming in five days... so we can’t walk it.”

Carter pulled out one of his knives and idly tossed it into the trunk of a nearby tree. “Not to mention, we need to get back on time, or Amekot will try to string us up for treason.”

Aroha let the shreds of leaf fall through her fingers as she glanced up to the others. “Who do you guys think it is?”

James folded his arms stiffly. “Probably Magnus.”

Carter glanced at him. “You know he’s not asshole on purpose.”

James shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t care, he puts people in danger.”

Aroha has heard a great many things about Magnus Andevār. That he was a demon, or a Creation, or some kind of turned Legacy. She knew they weren’t true, or at least not completely. It was the gentler rumours, the ones people whispered instead of joked about that she spent more time worrying over. Aroha had heard Sarah call him Setheen, but even that couldn’t have been true. Every Legacy had studied the Setheen at one point or another. They walked like people, talked like people, but as far as looks, there was no mistaking one for a person. Horns sprouted from their heads, claws from their fingertips, and fangs from their teeth. Some said that the Setheen were what inspired the depictions of Thall in the Ionadae.

Nichole was busy linking daisies into a chain as she asked, “Who would even benefit from selling us out?”

Her girlfriend sighed and replied, “Depends what they’re selling us out for.”

Michael burst from a thicket of trees back into the clearing, sweat dripping down his face as he fell to his knees wheezing and pointing in the direction he’d come.

“Oliver... Auderah...” Michael waved, unable to articulate his words between breaths.

James and Carter came to his side and the curly haired warrior said, “Deep breaths! What happened?”

Michael shook his head, feeling his heart burning in his chest. “No time!” He stood up again, grabbed Nichole in one hand and James in the other only to stop, staring in confusion around the clearing. “Where’s Sarah and Rose?”

Carter glanced to the southern-facing part of the forest and stuttered, “I don’t know, they’re not back yet. Neither is Magnus.”

Michael took his hands off his friends and held up his fingers to the sun, managing to squeeze less than three between the horizon and the falling light. “We’ve got twenty minutes at best. Raeken, I need you…” his words dwindled as he was unsure whether the beast understood all people or just Sarah.

Carter saw his trepidation and knelt down before the long-skulled reptile, slowly and clearly asking, “Where is Sarah?”

The Dragon looked at him and croaked back in Garganii, “In the town, east of here. Why are you talking so slowly?”

Carter looked to the others helplessly. “Does anyone know what he’s saying? He sounds like a pile of stepped-on frogs to me.”

Raeken growled from deep in his stomach and his scales stood up, crackling with electricity all across his back and folded wings.

Everyone but Carter backed up by several feet and the nobleman raised his hands slowly. “Sorry. You’re right, that was deeply unkind.”

The Dragon snarled but let his thunderous crackling die down. He knew what he had to do, and lightly closed his eyes. Raeken knew a great deal about his world, as the memories of the Old Drakonian were collective and shared amongst them, but only when they sought knowledge. Otherwise, their minds were independent. Often, dragons would sit in caves or on mountaintops and think for eons, learning endlessly until they were disturbed. People thought they craved gold, but no, it was knowledge that most dragons hungered for.

Common was a simple language, and like many of his kin, he had learned it and forgotten it more times in his life than he could remember.

Carter watched him meditate as Michael itched to leave.

Raeken opened his eyes and sighed, much to everyone’s confusion, before speaking in deep, rumbling Common Tongue, “This language is deeply upsetting. Do not make me speak it longer than necessary.”

Everyone present went silent as the grave, and Carter very slowly crept a foot backward with the others, politely folding his hands.

“Bowman,” Raeken said to Michael.

Michael felt the hairs on his arm stand up as the creature addressed him. “Yes?”

“Take your companions. Find the swordsman. Hold back the Auderah. I will find my Lady, and the Mage.” Raeken looked at each of them with his glowing yellow eyes and without any preamble, crouched low and leapt into the air, propelled by his enormous wings.

Michael blinked away his shock and grabbed his companions. As they turned to run back into the forest, they saw Magnus standing idly by one of the dying pines.

The red-eyed Paladin looked over the trunk and lightly placed his hand upon it, giving it only the slightest push and the entire pillar of wood groaned and toppled down in amidst the forest with a thunderous boom.

“Seems we’re almost out of time,” he said, sounding unconcerned.

Michael didn’t stop to speak to him, running straight passed and into the depths of the woods, followed sharply by Nichole, James, and Carter.

Only Aroha acknowledged him, folding her arms as he stood looking over the collapsed, rotting tree. “You coming?”

“Why would I do that?” he said, kneeling down and peeling a soft piece of bark off the tree’s trunk.

Aroha nocked one of her two arrows and looked at the pale, young man. When he wasn’t wearing his unbearable grin, he looked remarkably unlike himself. “It’s not my responsibility to convince you. But we could use your help. I don’t know if that means anything to you. But it should.”

Before he could respond, she jogged after the others and left him by the fallen tree, toying idly with the grey strip of bark.